This study aims to set directions for policy formulation on the integration of critical thinking (CT) in English for seventh grade students in Philippine public schools. Mixed methods were employed to analyze and compare quantitative and qualitative data regarding beliefs and practices of teachers with reference to integrating CT into teaching…

Beginning in April 2020, the Japanese government continued its English education language policy reform by introducing foreign language instruction as an academic subject for Grade 5 and Grade 6 students. The purpose of this study was to investigate how stakeholders across the education system have contended with policy creation, policy…

School principals are street-level bureaucrats whose sense-making about language policies makes them de-facto policy makers. In turn, their language policy-making is mediated by their language ideologies and contexts. Using a case study methodological framework, this article explores the language ideologies of 11 New York City elementary school…

Critical approaches to policy suggest that policy, even in the most apparently democratic polity or institution, codifies and extends the interests of those who disproportionately wield power (Levinson et al., 2009). While many people are involved in conversations and decision-making processes related to the implementation of grade retention or…

This paper explores, at the micro level, the sociolinguistic backgrounds of teacher trainees in a College of Education in Accra and their perceptions toward Ghana's current language-in-education policy. It aims at finding how these micro-level sociolinguistic insights could provide suggestions for language-in-education policies at the macro level.…

Despite advances in multilingual education (MLE) scholarship, education in most African societies remain characteristically congruent with colonial normative monolingual and transitional multilingual policies, which limit the use of native language(s) as media of instruction to early primary schooling. This contributes to poor educational and…

Herein we argue that teachers who work to foster their ability to teach English language learners effectively need to learn about their students. Although Ontario (Canada) educators have demonstrated that English language learners' cultural knowledge and language abilities can be mobilized within the classroom as important tools and resources for…

Governmental education policies provide vague, general confines in which local actors have to design concrete policies tailored to their needs. Such policies rely on the local capacities of schools for implementing them. Recently, qualitative studies reveal that a great deal of variation in policy enactment should be attributed to school…

This case study focuses on a 2008 incident where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) vans appeared near a K-5 elementary school. It was the first time school personnel experienced the impact of federal immigration agents policing illegality in their school community, and the event set off a chain of decision-making choices as to how…

Dual language (DL) programs experience many tensions stemming from English hegemony in its curriculum, instruction, and assessment. These tensions often work in concert to usurp the three goals of DL programs to develop bilingualism, biliteracy, and bicultural competence while achieving grade level standards for its students. Subsequently, there…

This article argues for the value of heritage language programs and the micro-level language policies that support them, focusing on a case study of a program in the USA to make this argument. We also argue for the importance of recognizing students' heritage languages, cultures, and individual goals and identities in mainstream school programs.…

The current study is a quantitative research that examined the mean differences of the students' attitude towards reading, based upon several demographic variables (such as gender, grade level and social media devices usage) The researchers used the Students' Reading Attitude Survey (SRAS) as the dependent variable; the sample consisted of 812…

The development of policy in relation to language learning at the early primary level of schooling has received only limited attention in the literature on policy studies in general, and within the framework of an emerging education policy space across Europe specifically. This paper offers an introductory discussion of the growth of education…

The quality of English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) instruction in elementary schools worldwide is an issue of concern for language policy and planning (LPP) scholars, as are examinations of power and ideologies operating in policy creation and implementation. This critical, exploratory study blends these two strands of inquiry by examining…

In an effort to reverse the reading crisis purported to plague public education, schools and districts are mandating prescriptive reading programs and teacher-centered instructional practices in hopes of improving the academic achievement of minority students, including English learners (ELs). The wide-spread implementation of these programs in…