Iceland has seen rapidly changing demographics in recent years as a result of growing immigration to the country. This is reflected in the education system where children speak altogether around 100 languages. This qualitative research aims at exploring the language policies and practices of diverse immigrant families and their cooperation with…

The diversity of teachers is half that of the student population in Australia. Despite government policies to support internationally trained teachers (ITTs), there remain major structural and institutional barriers working against access to the profession: an information gap, the lack of professional advice, the absence of programmes to help…

This article explores policy and practice in relation to support for speakers of community languages in Northern Ireland primary schools against the backdrop of the broader UK context, with reference also to the Republic of Ireland and wider European and international experiences. After an initial discussion of the educational, social and…

This paper presents data from two studies--a nationwide quantitative research and an ethnographic study--on Greek schoolteachers' attitudes towards immigrant pupils' bilingualism. The quantitative data come from a large-scale questionnaire survey, which aimed at the investigation of the needs and requirements for the implementation of a pilot…

This article focuses on the pedagogical beliefs, practices and ideological assumptions of 15 teachers who work with mother tongue instruction in Sweden. Despite support through provisions in Swedish laws, mother tongue instruction is clearly a marginalized subject, not least due to its non-mandatory status, the limited time allocated for it and…

This qualitative study investigated the language ideologies and instructional practices of an entire Spanish language faculty at a high school in a new gateway state for immigration. The study examined additive and subtractive practices of teachers as they strived to teach Spanish to heritage language learners (HLLs) enrolled in mixed…

To promote attainment and inclusion, Sweden offers tuition in migrant pupils' mother tongues as a regular school subject. However, the formulation of learning aims is problematic, and resources allocated to the subject do not correspond to ambitions expressed in steering documents. This case study presents an analysis of the organization of Mother…

In this paper, we present a synthesis of a series of studies, carried out by our research groups, from the Greek educational context on teachers' and immigrant students' views on issues of bilingual acquisition and of heritage language learning and teaching. Albeit including heterogeneous samples and employing quantitative and qualitative…

Based on a three-year ethnographic study, in such nested contexts involving six Korean-immigrant families, one regular French classroom, one private English institute, and one Korean church in Montreal, Canada, this study explores how the literacy practices and strategies of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) learners were influenced and…

A discussion of the use of native languages in the instruction of limited English proficient Asian students addresses three questions: (1) whether the students' native language should be used as a means of instruction; (2) whether there is a transfer of skills from the native language to the second language; and (3) how the language and culture of…

Issues related to school instruction in students' heritage or ancestral language are discussed, particularly in regard to dialect-speaking children or children with some degree of competence in the language. The first chapter considers similarities and differences between second language instruction and heritage language education. The findings on…

The report details the results of a 2-year followup study of immigrant students in South Australia high schools. The students (n=91) had all been participants in a New Arrivals transitional program, then scattered in different high schools. The study focused on the status, 2 years later, of students leaving the New Arrivals program in the second…