Background/Context: Instructional policy aims to shift the nature of teaching and learning. Decades of policy studies have highlighted the challenges inherent in these aims and the conditions necessary to support such change, including a robust infrastructure to support teacher learning. Further, teachers themselves must perceive and experience…

Background/Context: Instructional policy aims to shift the nature of teaching and learning. Decades of policy studies have highlighted the challenges inherent in these aims and the conditions necessary to support such change, including a robust infrastructure to support teacher learning. Further, teachers themselves must perceive and experience…

This study explores teachers' use of Spanish in sixth-grade bilingual science classrooms at an urban middle school in Texas. We used a case study approach to study how two Spanish-English bilingual teachers utilized Spanish during instruction in a unit on space exploration and their beliefs on Spanish use in English-dominant science classrooms.…

For linguistically diverse students, the path to college is often defined by language. Depending on assessments and institutional policies, students may be placed into course sequences in developmental English, adult basic education, and/or English as a Second Language courses. The purpose of this study was to better understand developmental…

The purpose of this study was to review policies that affect English Learners in Texas public schools. Specifically, the relationship between ESL certification and teacher preparedness to teach English Learners was addressed. In this journal-ready dissertation, the first article contains a review of national and state policies that were designed…

Drawing on institutional theory, this study describes how cognitive, normative, and regulative mechanisms shape bilingual teachers' language policy implementation in both English-only and bilingual contexts. Aligned with prior educational language policy research, findings indicate the important role that teachers' beliefs play in the policy…

A federally-funded three-year project is described that was undertaken by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages to train a group of Texas-based college level foreign language educators in French, German, and Spanish to serve as oral proficiency interviewers and evaluators of all applicants for a Texas state teaching certificate…

Reports on a 3-year project, conducted by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL), the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Foreign Language Association, and the University of Texas, to help establish an oral proficiency requirement based on the ACTFL guidelines for certification of new foreign language teachers. (Author/CB)

The 1982 volume of the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) newsletter includes articles on: getting results from English programs, second language teacher burnout; employment practices; language-related national policies and legislation; English as a second language (ESL) teacher certification in Texas; library search…