A significant and growing proportion of students in the United States speak primarily a non-English language at home. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of academic achievement patterns among language minority students in the United States. The first essay uses data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey Kindergarten Class…

Linguistic diversity provides even greater challenges for our educational system. English Language Learners (ELLs) are a diverse population of students who are learning English in school. They come from numerous cultural and economic backgrounds, and live throughout the country. The task of the classroom teacher is to find a way to reach these…

Although South Africa is committed to a policy of linguistic diversity, the language-in-education policy is still plagued by the racialization of language issues under apartheid and, more recently, by new challenges posed by internal African migration. Drawing on the experience of a school in the Western Cape Province, this paper explores the role…

Using a critical perspective as its framework, this article reports on a case study that explored language practices and perceptions of six South African teachers who participated in a professional development workshop entitled "Language Across the Curriculum." The study reveals the conflicting attitudes of the teachers toward the role…

This article draws attention to the language used by fourth and fifth grade teachers during social studies instruction and discusses the implications of how this language frames non-dominant groups, as in this case. Via the discussion of segments of instructional conversations, the authors point to the pervasive use of language that perpetuates…

In the spring of 2005, students and alumni of the Chinese University of Hong Kong staged an adamant protest against University directives which they perceived would result in a significant increase in the number of courses taught in English. They denounced the administration of selling out on the founding mission of the University, for which, as…

In this article, the author takes a close look at the discursive ways that Black and Latina preservice teachers reconcile tensions between their racial and linguistic identities and the construction of teacher identities in the current context of preservice teacher education in the United States. Through the study of language as representative of…

In the last two decades, scholars in discourse studies and sociolinguistics have shown considerable interest in how identity is encoded in discourses across various facets of life such as academia, home, politics and workplace. By adopting an ethnographic-style approach, this study shows how students in a Ghanaian university construct their…

In this article, we report on the results of a project devoted to improving literacy in South Africa's rural schools; specifically we report the results of an intervention study that centered on improving mother-tongue literacy instruction offered to learners in Grades 1 and 2 in South African schools. Our findings demonstrate that there are…

This study of 1,338 Spanish-speaking 1st graders examined contextual effects of bilingual programs on reading comprehension and the effect of language of instruction within these contexts. The study included 128 classrooms in 32 schools located in border Texas and in urban Texas and California. These classrooms used either English immersion or…

This article identifies the views and expectations of Chinese students located in nine cities in China and Hong Kong in regard to the delivery of foreign degree programs within China. This delivery mode is becoming a common form of educational delivery and augments other modes of international activity such as study abroad and distance education.…

There is little research on differential reading performance in multilingual contexts in less than ideal learning conditions. This article reports on a reading intervention project in a poor multilingual primary school in South Africa where reading levels in Northern Sotho (home language) and English (language of schooling) were initially very low…

Literature on the development of literacy skills for students with a moderate to severe intellectual disability is growing; however, little is known about effective literacy practices for Hispanic English language learners with a moderate intellectual disability. Additionally, little research has been conducted on how to utilize a student's…

This article analyses the status and future of bilingual education programs using Indigenous languages and English in remote Northern Territory schools. It explains why this educational approach is so contested at present, resulting in an unresolved situation which can best be regarded as an uneasy compromise on the ground and a stalemate at…

This qualitative study examines the use of digital storytelling as an instructional intervention for bridging the digital divide among public school students in rural Bhutan. Primary participants for the study included elementary school children who had never been previously exposed to computer technology and were recipients of a donated classroom…