The recent pandemic has enabled education stakeholders worldwide to realize the myriad affordances of information and communication technology (ICT) for distance learning. This paper describes lessons learned from an educational design research project involving the low-interactivity information and communication technology-supported distance…

The arts as a pedagogic medium can be an important tool for language learning, and yet many teachers avoid it, often because of a lack of confidence. The main purpose of this study was to explore the possibility of generalist educators, as opposed to art specialists, using the arts successfully as a cross-curricular tool to accelerate English…

Creative classroom constructions imbued with arts integration, a transmediational multimodal pedagogy, are examined in exploratory action research in three bilingual elementary classroom learning experiences. In each of the lessons, there was a whole-group introduction and small-group hands-on arts-based activities inclusive of peer dialoguing,…

Linguistic diversity has become a defining feature of schools in the twenty-first century. How do children make sense of such diversity and their own linguistic identities? This article draws on data generated through a multi-site inquiry with five English and French schools in Canada and France to investigate children's plurilingualism. According…

Intercultural studies have underexplored the issue of children's theatre as a tool for symbolic representations of (new, hybrid) identities. In this paper, I analyze two theatrical productions addressing both Spanish society and Romanian diaspora (first/second generation) to answer these questions: how are diasporic identities re-constructed in…

Children learning Chinese must cope with an opaque orthography lacking transparent relations between oral pronunciations and written characters: a challenge heightened for L2 learners. Use of digital Pinyin input may facilitate connections between oral and written language by allowing learners to access vocabulary they cannot yet write. We…

Inspired by academic thinking and practice-based work on creativity and education, and creative approaches in language education, this article is based on outcomes of the project 'Creating Welcoming Learning Environments: Disseminating Arts-Based Approaches to Including All Learners', funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council. The…

Students learning English as an additional language (EAL) in Australian schools frequently struggle with the cultural and linguistic demands of the classroom while concurrently grappling with issues of identity and belonging. This article reports on an investigation of the role primary school visual arts programs, distinct programs with a…

Purpose: The paper reports how lesson study helped to make the learning of students with limited English competencies visible in "Content and Language Integrated Learning" (CLIL). Design/methodology/approach: The two lesson study cycles took place in a Swiss primary school with a focus on three case pupils each with heterogeneous…

For United States of America (USA) and other developed countries, science achievement gaps begin to emerge in elementary and primary school. Such gaps between USA student groups typically are connected to socio-economic status (SES) and issues such as students still learning the English language. Through an experimental design, this National…

The purpose of this descriptive case study was to review practices aimed at improving literacy outcomes for multilingual language learners (MLLs). This was done by studying the internal coherence practices of a superintendent in Community School District 100 (a pseudonym), an urban school district in the northeast region of the United States.…

We utilize positioning theory to analyze language use within two different language program models in elementary language arts classrooms. We explore how the positioning of minoritized languages as valuable facilitates the use of students' home languages in classrooms and allows us to examine the connections between language, identity, and power.…

Background: Developing higher-order comprehension skills of learners in primary schools is a challenge that faces many countries. South Africa is no exception. Primary school learners in South Africa have particularly low literacy and comprehension skills: many learners struggle to read for understanding. There is little published scholarship that…

The increasing representation of young language-minority students in school settings around the world and recent insights into multilingualism as a potential resource for language learning and development call for acritical study of theoretical and practical implications for the field of language teaching and assessment. Relatively little…

With a Foreword by Hugh Starkey and Audrey Osler, and Afterwords by Graham Crookes, Hilary Janks and Allan Luke, this book promotes critical language education and illustrates how a critical agenda can be enacted in English language education in real classrooms. It presents four cases located in primary and secondary schools in the province of…