This article critically examines bilingual, intercultural education policies and practices in the context of the implementation of these policies in early childhood education. Specifically, it seeks to provide ethnographic background on the incorporation of Indigenous communities into preschools, through the participation of the Indigenous Culture…

Direct object clitics in Latin American Spanish are subject to great variability in features across dialects. Variability also characterizes bilingual acquisition and especially clitic doubling structures in language contact contexts. We focus on the distribution of clitics and Differential Object Marking (DOM) in clitic doubling structures among…

This study examines the motivations of learners studying Welsh in the city of Esquel, Argentine Patagonia. Welsh is considered a heritage immigrant language in this region, given the fact that a group of Welsh settlers arrived in 1865 and established successful settlements. After a flourishing period, the process of acculturation reduced the…

Even though Indigenous Latino/a/x students sometimes have different experiences from other students in bilingual programs in the US, they are often homogenized into the overarching category of 'Latino/a/o/x.' Using narrative inquiry and the sub-genre of collective autoethnography, this paper tells the story of our experiences studying K'iche' and…

Public education policies governing language revitalization and the teaching of indigenous languages have been in place for more than 20 years in Chile. In this journey, there has been considerable progress nationwide in the education of a generation of children in an intercultural socio-educational environment. However, there still exist…

This paper explores the sociolinguistic practices of a group of young bilingual rappers in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Against the background of ongoing language shift to Spanish in the region, the language choices of a group of Maya youths involved in Hip Hop culture and their agency as policy-makers at the grassroots level is analysed.…

The importance of learning an Aboriginal language has been documented, yet associations with positive educational outcomes are inconclusive. Previous research in the area has been limited by small sample studies, lack of comparison groups, and the omission of the consideration of socio-demographic factors and cultural activity participation. This…

This report presents findings from a follow-up exploratory study of the development of writing ability in an attempt to identify key component skills and competencies for elementary school literacy learners, grades 2nd, 4th and 6th. The first evaluation consisted in scoring first draft narrative texts for coherence, the second, an assessment of…

As colonial legacies, racial dynamics, lingering discrimination, and even violence against Indigenous people and children, especially the Mapuche people (the focus of this study and the largest Indigenous group in the country), continue in Chilean society, research on how their teachers learn and how they perceive their learning has become even…

Multilingual practices of translanguaging -- fluid, complex, and dynamic processes of using one's complete linguistic repertoire -- have been increasingly embraced by researchers and educators in bilingual education. Applying this perspective within the field of assessment has proven more challenging. In this project, we explore the role of…

This study serves as an initial inquiry regarding the early print knowledge of emergent bilingual preschool-age children living in an Indigenous community in Mexico. In this research, we examine various dimensions of print knowledge with Yucatec Maya-Spanish bilingual children for whom one of their languages (Yucatec Maya) is seldom seen in print…

This paper reports on findings from an interpretive policy analysis of the development and impacts of landmark federal legislation in support of Native American languages: the 1990/1992 Native American Languages Act (NALA). Overturning more than two centuries of federal Indian policy, NALA established the federal role in preserving and protecting…

This study uses data from the child and adult components of the 2001 Canadian Aboriginal Peoples Survey to examine what factors are related to speaking an Aboriginal language and how speaking an Aboriginal language is related to school outcomes. Even after controlling for child and family factors (age, sex, health status, household income, number…

This article discusses Quechua speakers' religious literacy practices in the native language in a rural community located in the department of Cuzco (Peru). I argue that in a situation where the school did not play the role of developing or maintaining the written vernacular, a group of community members found specific situations where they felt…

This article explores mother tongue awareness among several Brazilian Amerindian societies in contrast with the perception of the importance of the vernacular according to policy makers and academics. The perception of the vernacular as important is discussed in the light of continuing debate among Brazil's educators concerning appropriate…