Foundational literacy is a key lever for achieving higher levels of learning and societal wellbeing. However, with an enrolment of over 250 million children in schools, India is currently challenged by learning deprivation. Growing uptake of English-medium education along with less-than-optimal English literacy instruction practices present an…

The implementation of the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) policy in the Philippine basic education has gained traction among educators. Skepticism as to its effectiveness is evident especially in mathematics class where English is the universally recognised medium. This study explored how elementary teachers from a rural…

The aim of the current study is to expand our understanding of cross-linguistic transfer (CLT) to new languages and settings under-represented in the research literature. Empirical evidence of CLT is almost exclusively demonstrated in studies examining European and Asian languages in high-income countries. Literacy data were collected from 3561…

This longitudinal study documents a trilingual child's struggle with decoding and word recognition, the remedies sought to help him start reading in his second language (English) while he was in French immersion, and his performance after the intervention on tests of phonological awareness in L1 Romanian, L2 English, and L3 French. The study…

The aim of this study was to examine how sign language policies are being implemented in special schools for the Deaf in Zimbabwe. It employed in-depth interviews to solicit data from 29 participants who were four district school inspectors, four educational psychologists, four school heads and 17 grade one to three specialist teachers. Data were…

This study examined within and cross-language relations, and specifically, the role of phonological awareness (PA) skills in reading among young Hindi-speaking children (L1) who were learning to read English (L2) in Delhi, India. Data was collected from 143 children in Grades 1 and 2 using measures validated for this population. The analyses…

In this paper, we detail the outcomes of a small-scale intervention study that aimed to support the mathematising processes of Grade 2 South African learners when working with additive relations problems. We report on the mathematising shifts that were evident in pre- and post-test responses prior to and after a sequence of 13 intervention…

The Matthew effects suggest that children who struggle when learning to read are less likely to read for pleasure later in life compared to children who ease into reading quickly. One aspect of early literacy instruction that might hamper reading progress is learning to read simultaneously in two languages. Despite the long-lasting and widespread…

The present study examined the mediating role of text reading fluency in reading comprehension in English and Kiswahili utilizing longitudinal data from 628 first- and second-grade children from multilingual contexts in Kenya. We employed path analysis to explore the mediating role of text reading fluency on decoding and reading comprehension in…

In October 2023, a new deaf student, "Zuri," showed up in my second grade classroom. This often happens. Parents move into and out of the district for work, and it is common to get a new student in the middle of the year without warning. Zuri's eyes were wide when she came into the classroom, and she looked scared. Who were all these…

Emergent bilingual students in the U.S. often attend English-medium schools where their bi- and multi-lingual language resources are ignored and dismissed. This article draws on a social literacies perspective to explore how a second-grade teacher and her multilingual students re-framed one English-medium classroom to welcome and include…

Background: The educational context in South Africa does not always support the development of bilingualism to enable the cognitive and social advantages of dual language proficiency. The emphasis on English as the language of instruction overlooks bilingual competence. This study attempts to show that by considering conceptual vocabulary,…

Using a national database, this study examined the relationship between the language of instruction models and the frequency of peer-mediated learning activity on English learners' reading achievement (N = 1,004). Results from the Multilevel Modeling (MLM) analyses revealed an interaction between the language of instruction and the frequency of…

The purpose of this study was to investigate Spanish-speaking multilingual learner (MLL) students' long-term academic outcomes after participation in an early childhood education (ECE) program with English instruction. The study included 359 Spanish-speaking MLLs who qualified for Free and Reduced Lunch from Grade 1 to Grade 6. Participants…

Emergent bilingual students in the U.S. often attend English-medium schools where their bilingual language resources are ignored and dismissed. Research suggests this is harmful for students, but little empirical work has examined how teachers in English-dominant schools can support students' biliteracy. To address this problem, this qualitative…