The present study examines the lack of representation of minority communities in the existing literature by examining the representation of Afro-Latinxs in texts and visuals in seven Spanish as a Heritage Language (SHL) textbooks, and the ideologies behind these representations. Drawing upon Norman Fairclough's (1995) model for conducting Critical…

This longitudinal study (data collected from 2019 to 2023) examines the relation between Spanish-English bilingual Latino toddlers' (n=46; F=22; M=24) early gesture production (Mage=18.67 months; SD[subscript age]=1.02) and later language skills (M[subscript age]=36.87 months; SD[subscript age]=0.81). Video recordings at child-age 18-months…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the growth of previously established clinical markers of developmental language disorder (DLD) in Spanish-speaking bilingual children with and without DLD. Method: Forty-three bilingual children with DLD and 57 typically developing children were tested 3 times over a 2-year period. Their average…

Latino families should be fully supported to accomplish their goals for the bilingual development and school success of their children. Unfortunately, they often encounter misinformation and negative messages regarding early bilingual development, specifically the belief that young children are "confused" if they grow up with two…

This qualitative study highlights the nuances behind apparent internal linguistic discrimination by Latinx bilingual teachers toward their Latinx students' Spanish. Using a teacher solidarity lens and building on prior work in language ideologies and minoritized bilingual teacher identities, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 U.S. and…

This article focuses on the experiences of transnational Latinx youth and families through historias shared by the mothers. Transnational communities such as those from Latinx immigrant backgrounds have acquired critical perspectives because of their experiences in and across borders that have become central to their understanding of how to…

Although Dual Language Immersion Education is growing in popularity in the United States, staffing these programs represents one of the greatest challenges for school administrators. Ironically, this is the case even for Spanish-English Dual Language Immersion programs despite the fact that the United States has the second highest number of…

This article investigates the use of culture portfolios in second language Spanish university classes at an American private university as part of an innovation that incorporated an ACTFL standards-based curriculum to a basic language programme. The portfolios required students to complete different types of tasks through interactions with members…

There is a relationship between children's ability to formulate theories of mind (i.e., metacognitive hypotheses) about persons or characters in a text and their comprehension of the text. Nevertheless, few studies examine how young children engage their ontological background knowledge to formulate their theories-of-mind. Set in a public library…

Purpose: This exploratory study developed a process for reinterpreting previously published research studies in the bilingual literature. Three previously published studies on bilingual phonological acquisition were revisited due to the following characteristics: (a) they applied a theoretical framework for bilingual speech production developed by…

In a bilingual teacher preparation milieu fraught with high stakes and little time to develop biliteracies in humanizing ways, the researchers engaged in a comparative case study of two types of bilingual pre-service teachers, a heritage bilingual and an initially Spanish-dominant bilingual, to explore how they grew in their biliteracies after the…

This report examines the critical role of home visitors in supporting dual language development among Latino children, who represent a growing share of the U.S. population. Through surveys and interviews with home visitors, UnidosUS identified gaps in training and resources needed to effectively serve culturally and linguistically diverse…

The early language environments of low-income Hispanic children can be negatively affected when their Spanish-speaking caregivers face racism, assimilation pressure, and/or misinformed advice based on English-only ideologies. This article reports on the design and efficacy of Háblame Bebé, a language-promoting phone application that encourages…

Many family literacy programs are designed to teach bi/multilingual families school-based reading strategies, which often downplays families' rich cultural and linguistic resources and accentuates the gap between home and school literacy. We designed Reading Without Words to investigate how wordless picture books could be used to feature the…

In the "Bilingual Literacy Development Model: A holistic way to support Spanish-speaking children" research study, I studied bilingual families over a 5-month period in their home environments through home visits. Drawing from data obtained through home visits, including interviews with mothers and observations of family literacy…