Bilingual Education

This book gives educators important answers to the urgent question of how teachers and schools can facilitate language minority and immigrant students' progress in school. It offers an innovative and powerful method teachers and students can use to study the situational context of education, providing both the theoretical background and the practical tools to implement this approach. The situational context of education includes linguistic, economic, social, cultural, and political factors, as well as conditions, such as students' personal characteristics, family support, and quality of instruction. All of these factors influence the lives of students and their academic performance and contribute in many ways, some subtle and indirect, to making the educational experience more or less difficult for different students. The premise of the book is that objective study of the situational context of education by both students and teachers is beneficial because it leads to a more realistic view of how to facilitate students' progress in school. Designed as a text for graduate courses for preservice and in-service teachers working with students in bilingual, ESL, mainstream, and special education classrooms, the goal is to engage readers in learning not only from the literature but also from studying the situational contexts of their own students. The focus here is on the factors that affect language minority and immigrant students in the United States, but the framework is equally powerful for work with student populations in other social contexts. The Introduction includes an overview of the theory behind the study of the situational context of education and the implementation of this approach; describes the context of the pilot lessons included in the book; and explains how to use the lessons detailed in later chapters. Chapters 2-6 focus on different factors in the situational context of education: linguistic, economic, social, cultural, and political. A three-part structure is used: "Classroom Implementation" (a rich description of one lesson in a real classroom); "Context Variables" (a theoretical explanation of the specific factor the chapter addresses, providing the research basis for the sample lesson objectives); "Doing Analysis of the Context" (several sample lessons for implementation). The lessons are addressed to the teacher, with detailed ideas on how to carry out the lesson and evaluate the students' understanding of the situational context. Five Appendices provide helpful resources for the implementation of the lessons: an Annotated bibliography of relevant K-12 children's literature; Instructional Approaches; Scoring Rubrics for Content Objectives; Guidelines for a Contrastive Study of Situational Context; and Lesson Template. The lessons have been thoroughly field-tested with students and teachers. Because these lessons work on multiple levels, Situational Context of Education: A Window Into the World of Bilingual Learners benefits students from first grade through preservice and in-service teachers in university courses. Teachers get to know their students and their predicaments within the social context of the United States, and at the same time, the lesson activities have a great impact on the students in their classes. All are helped to achieve academically while gaining awareness of situational factors affecting their lives.

This comprehensive handbook introduces a theoretical framework of the contextual situations of language maintenance and shift in which are found bilingualism and bilingual education. It presents the basic facts about language and language families in the world and where they are located, and illustrates the range of possibilities of languages in contact. A major portion of this important work is devoted to a series of case studies of bilingualism/multilingualism within nation states, arranged alphabetically, and representing specific situations in all corners of the world. Each chapter stands alone and can be read for the information it contains. The book provides a valuabe resource for theory testing and documents the range of educational policies for minority social groups, and emphasizes the legitimacy and importance of scholarly study of this complex social issue.

This book describes the development process and dynamics of change in the course of implementing a two-way bilingual immersion education program in two school communities. The focus is on the language and literacy learning of elementary-school students and on how it is influenced by parents, teachers, and policymakers. Perez provides rich, highly detailed descriptions, both quantitative and qualitative, of the change process at the two schools involved, including student language and achievement data for five years of program implementation that were used to test the basic two-way bilingual theory, the specific school interventions, and the particular classroom instructional practices. The contribution of Becoming Biliterate: A Study of Two-Way Bilingual Immersion Education is to provide a comprehensive description of contextual and instructional factors that might help or hinder the attainment of successful literacy and student outcomes in both languages. The study has broad theoretical, policy, and practical instructional relevance for the many other U.S. school districts with large student populations of non-native speakers of English. This volume is highly relevant for researchers, teacher educators, and graduate students in bilingual and ESL education, language policy, linguistics, and language education, and as a text for master's-and doctoral-level classes in these areas.

This updated and revised edition of Hamers and Blanc's successful textbook presents new knowledge about languages in contact from individual bilinguality to societal bilingualism. It is multi- and interdisciplinary in approach, and analyzes bilingualism at individual, interpersonal, and societal levels. Linguistic, cognitive and sociocultural aspects of bilingual development are explored, as are bilingual problems. The authors cover a range of issues including the relationship among culture, identity, and language behavior in multicultural settings; communication strategies in interpersonal and intergroup relations; language shift; pidgins and creoles; language planning; and bilingual education.

Latino (or Hispanic) children are one of the fastest-growing groups in U.S. schools today. On average, these students perform worse than Anglo students on measures of academic achievement and other measures of academic success, and their drop-out rate is high. There are schools of excellence among those serving Latino children, but the majority of these children are placed "at risk" by schools and community institutions unable to build on the cultural, personal, and linguistic strengths these children are likely to bring with them to school. Schools serving Latino students need programs based on high-quality research, capable of being replicated and adapted to local circumstances and needs. The purpose of this book is to present the current state of the art with respect to research on effective instructional programs for Latino students in elementary and secondary grades. Surprisingly, this has not been done before; there are many books on the situation of Latino students in U.S. schools, but none so far have reviewed research on the outcomes of programs designed to enhance the academic achievement of these students. The chapters represent a broad range of methodologies, from experimental to correlational to descriptive, and the solutions they propose are extremely diverse. Each examines, in its own way, programs and practices that are showing success. Together, they present a rich array of research-based effective programs that are practical, widely available, and likely to make a profound difference. What binds the chapters together is a shared belief that Latino students can succeed at the highest levels if they receive the quality of instruction they deserve, and a shared belief that reform of schools serving many Latino students is both possible and essential. This is a book filled with statistics, description, and reviews of research--but even more, it is filled with optimism about what schools for Latino students can be, and what these students will achieve. It is a highly relevant and useful resource for educators, policymakers, and researchers who want to use research to inform the decisions they make about how to help Latino students succeed in elementary and secondary schools, and beyond.