Culturally Responsive Education has been widely proposed as a mechanism to improve the academic achievement of minority and Indigenous populations. Instruction in heritage languages has been shown to produce desirable outcomes both on linguistic and academic measures. However, culturally responsive and immersion instruction faces a number of…

In 1999, under federal government legislation, Mi'kmaw communities in Nova Scotia won the right to manage the education of their children for the first time in a century. With support from Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey, an education authority that provides central services, local Mi'kmaw schools deliver language immersion courses, culturally-appropriate…

Forty initially English-dominant Latino students in four 90:10 Spanish two-way dual-immersion programs and 62 of their peers in mainstream English programs were studied to find out if their attitudes toward Spanish and Spanish-dominant individuals differ. Significant differences were found on many variables, with two-way dual-immersion students…

Describes development since 1985 of a Maori immersion school for children aged 5-17. Provides background on Maori and New Zealand history, the Waikato tribe and the community, indigenous language revitalization efforts, and national school restructuring that facilitated Maori immersion programs. Discusses the school's educational practices,…

Reviews educational research on bilingual education and describes biases present in recent evaluations of bilingual programs. Contrary to assumptions about bilingual programs, recent findings suggest that native-language programs may be very effective. They support a strong foundation in the native language and set the basis for subsequent…

Data from three well-documented American Indian language immersion programs (teaching Navajo, Hawaiian, and Keres) and from an ongoing large comparative study of language shift/retention in six Indian school-community sites suggest that immersion schooling can serve the dual roles of promoting students' school success and revitalizing endangered…

A Massachusetts two-way bilingual education program provides initial first-language (L1) literacy development for all students, teaches half of the curriculum in L1 and half in L2 by third grade, and selectively integrates native and non-native speakers of the target language. Both target groups meet academic and linguistic goals by fifth grade.…

In this article, the authors describe the results of research that explored how Proposition 227--a measure that mandates English immersion instruction for all English language learners--has affected bilingual teachers at varying points in their professional development. The perspectives of preservice, novice and veteran bilingual teachers offer…

This paper presents an ethnographic study of the Oyster Bilingual School in Washington, D.C., a successful two-way Spanish-English bilingual elementary school designed to produce biliterate and bicultural students. The study was based on classroom observations, interviews of students, teachers, and administrators, and an examination of school…

The partial immersion program at Key Elementary School (Arlington, Virginia), where half the instruction is in English and half in Spanish, has completed its sixth year. The program review, including classroom observation, interviews with or surveys of students, teachers, parents, and staff, and student assessment, revealed a highly successful…

A handbook to assist school district personnel in designing special instructional programs for limited English proficient (LEP) students considers the variety of circumstances in individual school districts by providing program models appropriate for one or many language minority students. The first section provides background information on the…

Papers on language processing, culture, and language learning and teaching include: "A Theory of Intelligence as Semiosis: With a Couple of Comments on Interlanguage Development" (John W. Oller, Jr.); "Along the Way: Interlanguage Systems in Second Language Acquisition" (Larry Selinker); "Strategy and Tactics in Second Language Acquisition"…