This book calls for critical adaptations when theories of bilingual education, based on practices in the North, are applied to the countries of the global South. For example, it challenges the assumption that transitional models necessarily lead to language shift and cultural assimilation. Taking an ethnographically-based narrative on the purpose…

A California elementary school teacher discusses the school-wide transitional bilingual education (TBE) program in her school, the problems associated with it, and her participation in an initiative to promote English language instruction for language minority populations. The institutional context of the TBE program, demographic changes that…