Studies have found that bilinguals respond differently to personality measures in their two languages, indicating that bilinguals change their personality as they switch between their two languages and/or cultures. Across two experiments, we attempted to investigate the effect of language and culture separately on how bilingual speakers rate…

Globally, there has been increasing adaptation of curricula frameworks in early childhood education, providing overarching principles of practice rather than subject specific templates for teaching and learning. While such a movement is to be commended as supporting a socio-cultural approach in meeting each child's unique social and cultural…

It has been suggested that in foreign language learning and ELF situations, identity might not be implicated in any great extent. Focusing on the impact globalization has on identities, the purpose of this study is to consider whether identity might be involved in Swedish students' reasons for enrolling on an English-medium university program and,…

The study presented in this paper focuses on young people's languaging, or ways-with-being-with-words, including literacies, in everyday practices that stretch across formal and informal learning spaces. Taking sociocultural and ethnographic points of departure, the aim of the study is to investigate aspects of young people's situated and…

This article explores how five children born in Sweden whose parents were born in Iran talk about their own cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and the role these play in their lives. The different ways in which they do so exemplify the complexity involved in the ongoing construction and performance of identities when certain identity options seem…

Current research emphasizes the importance of the mother tongue in second language teaching. This paper describes a longitudinal project which studies 4 groups of Finnish children in Malmo, Sweden, who are receiving a bilingual education starting from the pre-school. (Editor)

A study of 32 Swedish workers without hearing impairments and 34 associates who were deaf investigated their social relations in bicultural work groups. Results found that a majority of both groups felt they understood each other and were understood, but almost all participants reported misunderstanding between the two groups. (CR)

The education and socialization of immigrant children and youths is a problem for educators and policy makers around the world, particularly in developed countries. The challenge is to achieve social equality or at least equal social opportunity for minorities; the dilemma is whether the culture of these immigrants should be replaced by that of…

The paper examines the phenomenon of group bilingualism, the origin of the contact situations which lead to it, and the role of language in maintaining ethnic boundaries, especially in revitalization movements. Language shift and language maintenance are seen as indicators of the degree to which ethnic boundaries are being maintained. Many ethnic…

Papers in this collection were presented at a 1982 symposium convened to address the question, "What is the best way to provide school education for immigrant children?" The papers (and their authors) include (1) "The Social and Ideological Context of Multicultural Education in Immigrant Countries" (Ronald Taft); (2)…

This paper discusses some major theories of social and educational change (e.g., evolutionary theory, structural functional theory, systems theory, group conflict theory, and cultural revival and social movement theory), and delineates the identification and interpretation of variables relevant to an understanding of bilingual education within the…