This article uses cognitive measures previously developed within linguistic relativity research to explore the thinking patterns of Yucatec Maya-Spanish bilingual children in the Yucatan peninsula. These measures were designed to detect cognitive patterns associated with specific language patterns. Here, these measures are used to test whether 12…

The sharing of American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) cultures and lifeways provides opportunities for helping young children form deep connections to their community, which, in turn, aids in the development of their early language and literacy skills. This issue brief--based on interviews with eight Tribal Maternal, Infant, Early Childhood Home…

The Italian linguistic space has radically changed through the onset of the new millennium due to the presence of innovative multiple linguistic practices that have taken place as a consequence of deterritorialization processes. Furthermore, Latino diaspora in recent years have fostered the appearance of new forms of Global Spanishes (García and…

Two major, inter-related issues are analysed in this paper -- mother tongue (MT) and early childhood care and education (ECCE). Evidence tells us that learning first in one's MT leads to better outcomes in the future -- for individuals, cultures, and nations. But MT is used rarely in ECCE programmes and the early grades of primary school so that…

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…

How heritage learners successfully maintain their heritage language (HL) and literacy is a significant topic of discussion in the field of bilingual education. This study examines what factors are most closely associated with literacy competence by inspecting Korean heritage learners' language and literacy practice patterns and their literacy…

Ajit Kumar Mohanty is a Professor of Social Psychology of Education at the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. Mohanty received his doctorate from University of Alberta, Canada, in 1978, and was a postdoctoral Fulbright fellow at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, between 1981-1982. He was…

Research Studies reveal that the development of native language proficiency and full bilingualism enhances rather than impedes the education and personal development of minority children. Teachers of language and all subjects should cooperate in promoting native language proficiency and encouraging its use at home. (PMJ)

Language maintenance has been an issue debated whenever languages come into contact. This paper presents a detailed discussion of the reasons most often cited as to why languages should be maintained, with a specific focus on Australia because of the country's multilingual makeup. Australia currently has about 150 aboriginal and Torres Strait…

Semilingualism is discussed as a sociolinguistic concept and is viewed as a mediating variable when the society reproduces the class structure and vocational structure of suppressed minorities. A Finnish group of immigrant children in Sweden is the minority considered. It was found that the longer the Finnish children were educated in Finnish, the…

In many Southern countries, there are multiple and conflicting perspectives regarding the central role of language, particularly in relation to educational and developmental issues. A great number of multilingual, multicultural and multi-ethnic Southern countries are using "English" or some other dominant tongue as their only…

Project P.I.A.G.E.T. (Promoting Intellectual Adaptation Given Experiential Transforming) is a demonstration program to train five year old Hispanic children in the English language while maintaining their Spanish language skills. The instructional program is based on Piagetian principles which recognizes thought and language development as a…

A study compared language skill development and cultural attitudes of second-grade children taught in an additive-bilingual program setting with those of second-grade children from a monolingual classroom setting. Subjects were 41 second-grade children participating in a Spanish immersion program and 19 children from a regular second-grade…

The second of three volumes that present the three basic factors of the bilingual education equation--public policy, theory, and technology--this volume focuses on the theoretical aspects of bilingual education. Papers from the areas of language, culture, neurolinguistics, and pedagogy include: (1) "Ethnic and Linguistic Processes: The Future…