Issues related to supporting the language of schooling have become important social and educational policy concerns in Ireland. This article reports on a three-year investigation of the micro-climate of English language support provision in 70 post-primary schools since 2007 and highlights potential points of leverage in the educational system for…

Language minority students' writing is often measured solely in terms of its distance from native speaker norms, yet doing so may ignore the process through which these texts are realized and the role that the first language plays in their creation. This study analyzes oral interactions among adolescent second language writers during an extended…

This study explores the nature of reading comprehension difficulties among early adolescent language minority (LM) learners and native English speakers in urban schools. Sixth-grade students (399 LM learners, 182 native English speakers) were screened for difficulties, using a standardized measure of reading comprehension. Of these, 262 students…

Despite the declarations of international documents on minority language rights, provision is patchy for supporting minority languages in the UK, where since the 1980s governments have deliberately or unwittingly greatly raised the profile and comparative standing of English. The partial exception to this trend has been the treatment of…

This article develops the interface between language policy and planning and equal educational opportunity (EEO). Tracing the trajectory of the development "equal educational opportunity" as a normative ideal, this study argues that language policy must serve to promote "actualist" conceptions of EEO. To do this, acquisition…

This article discusses a school-wide implementation of an arts-based initiative to address the alienation experienced by linguistic minority parents. In order to assuage the prevalent, although unintentional, practices of marginalization, a group of students and teachers established a platform that enabled shared discourse among minority and…

The percentage of K-12 children from homes where a language other than English is spoken has doubled in the last 30 years, and the language minority population will soon outnumber English speakers in many major cities in the United States. With this shift in the population, cultural proficiency in America's schools is of great importance. The…

What reading programs have been proven to help English language learners succeed in reading? To find out, this review summarizes evidence on achievement effects of reading programs for English language learners and other language minority students in the elementary grades. The research summarized in this article shows how much remains to be done…

A language currently at the nexus of change is Kashubian (in Polish: "kaszubski"), a West Slavic language spoken in northern Poland in the province of Pomerania. Termed a "regional language" by the Polish government in preparation for the ratification of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (signed in 2003…

Video games are explored as a means of reviving dying indigenous languages. The design and production of the place-based United Sugpiaq Alutiiq (USA) video game prototype involved work across generations and across cultures. The video game is one part of a proposed digital environment where Sugcestun speakers in traditional Alaskan villages could…

The quest for understanding the dynamics of language and the related sociocultural aspects of students with autism continues to be a challenge. Today, the term "autism" refers to a set of descriptions that profile a wide range of children who have impairments in their abilities to initiate and sustain healthy, normal social relationships…

One of the most important issues in Tibetan education is resolving the problem of instruction language in the Tibetan regions. This paper provides a preliminary exploration of this issue and makes some proposals based on the bilingual state of today's education in the Tibetan regions and the needs of Tibetan as a language of instruction for social…

This article traces the ways in which New York City schools have responded to the multilingualism of its children in the last forty years. I review here the past to construct the future--the future of the past. I argue that in the predominantly Puerto Rican community of the 1960s and 1970s a simple approach toward languages and bilingualism in…

This exploratory study investigates the intersection of bilinguality and giftedness in the public school system in Ontario and the connection between the bilinguality of gifted immigrant minority language (IML) speakers and their giftedness. Following a series of semistructured interviews with gifted pupils and teachers in the gifted program in an…

Young, Wright, and Laster (2005) stated that since the "Brown v. Board of Topeka, Kansas" decision, gaps in educational achievement have been a recognized problem across the United States. Particularly, differences in achievement levels for elementary and secondary African American students have remained. Daniels (1998) stated that…