How does early educational quality affect longer-term academic outcomes? We shed light on this question via a natural experiment in the Philippines--the implementation of a mother tongue education policy in public schools in kindergarten to Grade 3. This policy led to an unexpected decline in educational quality, but differentially in a subset of…

Using a national database, this study examined the relationship between the language of instruction models and the frequency of peer-mediated learning activity on English learners' reading achievement (N = 1,004). Results from the Multilevel Modeling (MLM) analyses revealed an interaction between the language of instruction and the frequency of…

Knowledge of symbols, which can be influenced by school ethos, informs identity construction in primary school children. This study aimed to explore Gaelscoil (Irish-medium) and English-medium primary school children's familiarity with Irish and European symbols. Thirty 9-12-year-old children in Ireland participated in this study; 15 from two…

The need to identify and recognize school going children with giftedness remains a concern of the Republic of Kazakhstan's government. This concern motivated this study to examine the internal structure of the giftedness characteristic identification scale (GCIS) for use by Kazakhstan's school children. Exploratory quantitative research approach,…

Background: Within the multilingual context of KwaZulu Natal (KZN), learners in Grades 1-3 are taught in their native language which is isiZulu. From Grade 4, English or Afrikaans becomes the medium of instruction. Yet, many parents prefer that their children be taught in English. It is the assumption that young learners' self-concept and identity…

In October 2023, a new deaf student, "Zuri," showed up in my second grade classroom. This often happens. Parents move into and out of the district for work, and it is common to get a new student in the middle of the year without warning. Zuri's eyes were wide when she came into the classroom, and she looked scared. Who were all these…

This study investigates the practicalities of the instructional language policy and the role that English plays in multilingual classrooms at the lower primary level. The research aims to find answers to the following questions. First, in a multilingual lower primary classroom where some teachers and some pupils do not understand the major local…

In this paper, we detail the outcomes of a small-scale intervention study that aimed to support the mathematising processes of Grade 2 South African learners when working with additive relations problems. We report on the mathematising shifts that were evident in pre- and post-test responses prior to and after a sequence of 13 intervention…

Translanguaging pedagogies support multilingual students by activating prior knowledge, integrating home languages and cultures, and utilizing multimodal learning. However, as equity-oriented pedagogies, they redress long-standing practices of denying students access to their home languages or demanding a strict separation of their interwoven…

This study investigates the impact of Filipina domestic workers (FilDWs), a marginalized group in Hong Kong (HK), on HK children's language development. It focusses on FilDWs' influence on the second language (L2) English of bilingual HK primary school children attending an English Medium of Instruction school. The elements investigated are L2…

Research is needed exploring how teachers and students in English-medium schools transform classrooms to welcome and value bilingualism and biliteracy. This article draws on social literacies and placed resources perspectives to explore how one classroom of second-grade students used Google Translate as a tool to support their biliterate…

Mother Tongue Education (MTE), despite being the most reliable method of learning, is a challenge for the African countries that fail to implement MTE policies due to lack of resources, stakeholders' attitudes towards mother tongues, and lack of political will. Keeping in view the plight of the primary implementers of such policies, hence, this…

Linguistic heterogeneity and fluidity--prominently captured in the notion of 'translanguaging'-- are starting to be seen as normative and natural. In turn, homogeneity and fixity, instantiated for example in standard languages, are becoming the 'odd-ones-out.' I challenge the dichotomy between linguistic fluidity (languaging) and fixity (named…

Language as a cultural element influences Aboriginal pupils' mathematic performance. This study examines the utility of oral test in native language for computation and word problem mathematics items using score comparability. The sample includes 230 Grade 5 Orang Asli pupils from eight Malaysian primary schools in two states. By employing…

There is no dearth of studies on pronunciation problems of students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL); however, research on pronunciation problems of young learners is scarce. Therefore, to fill this research gap, the present quasiexperimental study aimed at investigating the effect of L2 input on the pronunciation performance of young…