This article emphasizes the importance of embracing and mobilizing students' linguistic practices, particularly in bilingual settings. The authors reflect on their experiences as bilingual teachers, initially correcting students' use of regional Spanish variations and translanguaging (mixing English and Spanish). However, through advanced studies,…

Current scholarship on translingual pedagogies focus on writer's translingual strategies and practices. While scholarship explores translingual assessment practices, there is limited quantitative research on how we can measure students' translingual dispositions. This article examines factor structure of a Translingual Disposition Questionnaire to…

This volume brings together studies which represent current perspectives on second language learning and teaching in relation to language and culture in intercultural contexts. The authors reflect on and analyse a variety of topics such as the significance of recognizing and valuing heritage speakers in intercultural contexts, the role of…

In this personal reflection, Sonia Nieto recounts the lessons she learned about language and literacy from learning to speak Spanish and then English; to reading and writing; and the impact of these lessons on her identity, teaching, research, and life; and, more broadly, on the fields of education and literacy.

This article seeks to trace the cartography of truth-telling through a posthuamanist predicament of ritual culture in higher education and critical inquiry. Ritual culture in higher education such as graduation ceremony produces and reflects the realities of becoming subjects. These spaces are proliferating grounds for truth telling and practical…

Emphasis placed on academic writing in English may create challenges for multilingual academics as they negotiate diverse languages. Based on personal interviews with bilingual Latina/o academics in rhetoric and composition, this study reveals that their language practices reflect diverse resilient qualities at various stages in their academic…

The purpose of this narrative study was to explore how Latina cultural brokers understand their role in translating and interpreting complex, adult situations for their families, called cultural brokering, and how that background shapes their collegiate experiences. While much of the higher education literature in recent years has focused on the…

This is a qualitative interpretive study that explores the past and present experiences of heritage learners (HLs) of Mexican descent who were studying or had recently studied advanced Spanish in institutions of higher education. All of the participants had been exposed to Spanish in the home and began their studies in elementary or middle school…

The purpose of this study was to explore Latina students' identity as Latina first-generation college students. Constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006) was used to explore two research questions: (a) For Latina students who are the first in their family to go to college, what is their understanding of being a Latina…

The program grew out of the desire of monolingual students, native bilingual students, and instructors for a class to meet the specific needs of Spanish-speaking students of Spanish. The objectives are: (1) to improve the self image of the students, (2) to increase access to the Spanish-speaking community of the world, (3) to use native bilingual…

The two papers presented here reflect on experiences involved in founding and participating in La Compania de Teatro Bilingue, a bilingual theater group at a Texas university that recognizes the commonality of the Mexican-American and Anglo heritages in South Texas. The first paper discusses the need for such a group, explains its goal of…

Discusses the relationship of the school to Spanish-surnamed students. Reviews literature on self-concept, academic achievement, skin color, language, socioeconomic status, and cultural traits of Spanish-speaking Americans. (JMB)

A project is reported in which selected bilingual Mexican-American teachers from Texas traveled to Mexico for a four-week study to collect materials appropriate for U.S. classroom use. The effects of the project on language fluency and ethnic self-concept are discussed. (22 references) (LB)

The translation and adaptation for a Spanish speaking college population of the Academic Self-Concept Scale (ASCS) developed by Reynolds et al. (1980) was studied to report the initial validation results. A total of 485 students in five different colleges in Puerto Rico responded to items in this scale. In addition, information on the academic…

Addresses the social psychological paradox of learning a language, which in one interethnic situation represents the "ingroup" language, while in another interethnic context, it represents the "outgroup" language, a situation characterizing the language-learning experience of most Puerto Rican return migrants (PRRMs). (25…