The discussion of the power of the teacher's voice is raging again in light of the standardisation of education and the emergence of testing as the new regime of truth in educational processes. In confrontation with this paradigm, Jasinki and Lewis have raised pertinent questions regarding the role of language and the voice of the teacher. By…

This investigation of translanguaging is grounded upon the ubiquitous theme of "structures" explicitly and implicitly found in the translanguaging literature. Through this theme, this paper begins by providing a novel theoretical framework followed by considering the need for translanguaging (e.g., education's growth of multilingualism;…

In response to Golinkoff, Hoff, Rowe, Tamis-LeMonda, and Hirsh-Pasek's (2018) commentary, we clarify our goals, outline points of agreement and disagreement between our respective positions, and address the inadvertently harmful consequences of the word gap claim. We maintain that our study constitutes a serious empirical challenge to the word…

Sperry, Sperry, and Miller (2018) aim to debunk what is called the 30-million-word gap by claiming that children from lower income households hear more speech than Hart and Risley ([Hart, B., 1995]) reported. We address why the 30-million-word gap should not be abandoned, and the importance of retaining focus on the vital ingredient to language…

Sperry, Sperry, and Miller (2018) aim to debunk what is called the 30-million-word gap by claiming that children from lower income households hear more speech than Hart and Risley (1995) reported. We address why the 30-million-word gap should not be abandoned, and the importance of retaining focus on the vital ingredient to language…

Early research on child development in Africa was dominated by expatriates and was primarily addressed to the topics of testing the cross-cultural validity of theories developed "in the West," and the search for universals. After a brief review of the outcome of that research, we propose two additional types of motivation that seem…

Does the child's emerging understanding of other minds interact with his/her growing understanding of language? If so, in what ways? This paper focuses on the recent proposals of Daniel Hutto and colleagues regarding the role played by the child's developing skills in narrative discourse in his/her acquisition of folk-psychological understanding.…

Executive function mechanisms underpinning language-related effects on theory of mind understanding were examined in a sample of 165 preschoolers. Verbal labels were manipulated to identify relevant perspectives on an explicit false belief task. In Experiment 1 with 4-year-olds (N = 74), false belief reasoning was superior in the fully and…

This paper contains three parts. In the first part, what it means to be bilingual in sign language and the spoken (majority) language is explained, and similarities as well as differences with hearing bilinguals are discussed. The second part examines the biculturalism of deaf people. Like hearing biculturals, they take part, to varying degrees,…

Describes the pioneering work in England of Susan and Nathan Isaacs in child development and educational psychology and argues that their work provides a remarkably contemporary analysis of the origin and function of human language. (Author/RDN)

This report identifies key issues for providing early childhood special education services to young children who are visually impaired and for working with families of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. First, it discusses the incidence of visual impairment and associated disabilities among young children, the process of early…