Bilingual, Multilingual, and Multicultural Education Commons^™

The Importance Of Maintaining A Heritage Language While Acquiring The Host Language, Anna L. Vallance

Honors College Theses

Few issues are as relevant to modern education as the topic of bilingual students. As the school-age population in the United States becomes increasingly diverse, teachers and other educational professionals need to know how they can best serve their English learners (students who speak a first language other than English). A common question that many educators grapple with is what role a student’s heritage language (native language) ought to play in the classroom. Specifically, how important is it that students maintain their heritage language? By critically reviewing the existing literature relating to the subject, this article strives to answer that …

Hispanic Preservice Teachers’ Peer Evaluations Of Interdisciplinary Curriculum Development: A Self-Referenced Comparison Between Monolingual Generalists And Bilingual Generalists, Song An, Daniel Tillman, Meilan Zhang, William H. Robertson, Josefina Tinajero

William H. Robertson

New York State Education Department Policies, Mandates And Initiatives On The Education Of English Language Learners, Angela Carrasquillo, Diane Rodríguez, Laura Kaplan

Journal of Multilingual Education Research

This article is a summary of a longer report, completed under the direction of the Research Institute for the Study of Language in Urban Society and the doctoral program in Urban Education at the Graduate Center in the City University of New York (CUNY) with funding provided by the New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals (NYSIEB). It describes educational laws, policies, mandates, and initiatives regarding the education of English language learners, which took shape and reverberated in the New York State Education Department. This historical descriptive research focused on the historical period from 1965 to the year 2013. The …

The Vote On Bilingual Education And Latino Identity In Massachusetts, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce

Jorge Capetillo-Ponce

In November 2002, the Massachusetts electorate voted overwhelmingly to pass Referendum Ballot Question 2 (Q. 2), sponsored by California millionaire Ron Unz. The passage of this initiative by close to 70% of the voters effectively ended bilingual education in the state as it had been known for thirty years. Exit polling done at selected cities in Massachusetts by the Mauricio Gaston Institute and UMass Poll revealed, however, that out of a total 1,491 Latinos polled, a vast majority of them, around 93%, had voted in favor of rejecting Q. 2 and keeping bilingual education in place. Indeed, Q. 2 became …

Prospects For Improving Bilingual Education: An Analysis Of Conditions Surrounding Bilingual Education Programs In U.S. Public Schools, Jennifer A. Gorman

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Bilingual education is a subject of debate in education. Some claim that bilingual education programs are detrimental to students, but decades of research supports the benefits of bilingualism and bilingual education for both English Language Learners and monolingual English speakers. The U.S. does not have bilingual education programs in proportion to the needs that these programs could meet for students in public schools. If bilingualism is beneficial, then why do we not have more bilingual education programs? Research extensively covers the internal components of bilingual education programs but only touches on the effect of the external conditions necessary for program …

Spiral Of Decline Or “Beacon Of Hope:” Stories Of School Choice In A Dual Language School, Timothy Pearson, Jennifer R. Wolgemuth, Soria Elizabeth Colomer

Educational and Psychological Studies Faculty Publications

Public schools in some areas of the U.S. are as segregated as they were prior to court-ordered busing, in part due to school choice policies that appear to exacerbate extant segregation. In particular, Latina/o students are increasingly isolated in schools characterized as being in cycles of decline. Our case study of one such school is based on a reanalysis of interview, focus group, and survey data from three research and evaluation projects. We constructed accounts of parents’ decisions to leave and remain at Martinez Elementary, a segregated dual language school experiencing increases in Latina/o and low socio-economic student enrollment and …

Moisés Sáenz: Vigencia De Su Legado (English Translation), Edmund T. Hamann

Department of Teaching, Learning, and Teacher Education: Faculty Publications

This book mainly offers the biography of Moisés Sáenz (1888-1941), founding architect of Mexico's system of public schooling and former student of John Dewey, describing in particular his roles in creating rural schools, initiating bilingual education (for Mexico's indigenous populations), and experimenting with linkages between schooling and community development. The volume also includes the author's reflection on the relevance of learning about Profr. Sáenz for his own intellectual trajectory (which includes studying the movement of students between Mexico and the US) and reflections by Mexican educators Humberto Leal Martinez and Juan Sánchez García.

Words Flying On The Wind: Buriat Mongolian Children In A Chinese Bilingual School, Valerie Sartor

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

This study focused on the language socialization experiences non-mainstream Indigenous Buriat youth from the Republic of Buriatia, Russian Federation, encountered as they attended a bilingual school in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, China. They migrated in order to start language studies which would eventually allow them to study alternative Mongolian medicine in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia. Both the Russian Federation and the Republic of China are countries in transition. The Russian educational and economic systems have made dramatic changes after the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991; currently, the economy and educational opportunities are in decline and there is a widening …

[Special Issue On Hmong Newcomers To Saint Paul Public Schools] The Affective Consequences Of Cultural Capital: Feelings Of Powerlessness, Gratitude, And Faith Among Hmong Refugee Parents, Bic Ngo

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

In education research, the analysis of the role of cultural capital has focused primarily on its role in parent involvement. Little attention has been paid to how cultural capital affects the attitudes or feelings of parents about their worth and roles as parents. In this article I examine the impact of the exclusionary characteristic of cultural capital on refugee Hmong parents from Wat Tham Krabok. I highlight themes of uncertainty, powerlessness, gratitude and faith that parents repeatedly raised when speaking about their childrens education. I suggest that paying attention to the affectiveemotionalconsequences of cultural capital is critical for understanding the …

[Special Issue On Hmong Newcomers To Saint Paul Public Schools] Supporting Hmong Newcomers Academic And Social Transition To Elementary School, Martha Bigelow, Letitia Basford, Esther Smidt

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

When elementary aged Hmong children were resettled in St. Paul Public Schools after the closing of the Wat Tham Krabok refugee camp in Thailand, their families largely enrolled them in either a Transitional Language Center or a Language Academy program. This study reports on the perceptions teachers and educational assistants had about how well these programs met the needs of this unique population of newcomers. Findings show that the Transitional Language Centers were better able to ease the adjustment to school for the Hmong newcomers because of the safe, bilingual environment they created.

When Indigenous Immigrant Students Come To Us: Bilingual Education And Indigenous Rights In The 21st Century -- An Untold Story, Laura A. Valdiviezo

Laura A. Valdiviezo

A view of bilingual education beyond borders allows us to understand the complex dimensions of the work of advocates and educators in the United States. Certainly, the history of bilingual education is intimately related to the history of border crossings and immigration that lays at the core of the building of the United States and that continues to impact what happens in schools every day. The untold story accompanies the immigrant parent who approaches the school for the first time and the newly arrived children who meet their teacher and fellow students in a multilingual setting. As educators we understand …

Dual Language K-2 Latina Teachers: Juxtaposing Linguistic Identities And Pedagogical Practices On The U.S.-Mexico Frontera, Brenda Oriana Fuentes

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This ethnographic study explored the linguistic identities and pedagogical practices of Latina bilingual-certified K-2 teachers in a dual language (DL) program in the U.S.-Mexico border area. Drawing on sociocultural theory, methods of data collection and analysis focused on linking DL Latina teachers' identity formation with both their conceptions of teaching and their actual pedagogical practices related to language use. The findings from this study painted a portrait of how DL teachersâ?? languages, literacies, and identities intertwined to shape their pedagogical practice. The linguistic backgrounds of DL teachers on the border were shaped by country of origin and languages, schooling experiences, …