The reawakening of the Indigenous Gamilaraay language in northern inland New South Wales, Australia involves righting two centuries of prohibition and mistreatment after invasion by English-speaking settlers. Gamilaraay is no longer used as an everyday language in the community, although it has strong emblematic value for the Gamilaraay community.…

Building on the recent studies revealing that official bilingualism policies in Canada are often used to reinforce a specific racial and linguistic order, this paper addresses the impact of these federal-level policies on education policies at the provincial level. From the policy genealogy perspective, we examine Ontario's Heritage Languages…

This paper examines the intersection of heritage-language education advocacy with anti-racist activism in the 1970s and 1980s in Toronto. The province of Ontario initiated the Heritage Languages Program in 1977. By focusing on discontinuities in the policy's implementation, the paper identifies multiple strategies that Black anti-racist activists…

In the United States, English is not the official language but the dominant one. But for many students, the dominance of English instruction has come at the expense of losing their first language. For much of our history of schooling in the United States, students have been forced to leave their heritage or home languages at the door when they…

This essay traces the bilingual education movement that began in Tucson through the efforts of local teachers, university faculty and educational leaders. It is argued that Mexican Americans and their allies played a crucial role in promoting the merits of bilingual education at the local, state and national levels. Their advocacy of…

With the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001, the United States spent millions upon millions of dollars in a largely unsuccessful effort to close the academic achievement gap between American-Indian and some other ethnic minorities and mainstream Americans. NCLB's focus on teacher quality and evidence-based curriculum and…

In this article, Jeff Bale reviews empirical research, policy analysis, and other forms of scholarly commentary on the long-standing rationale of framing language education in service of U.S. geopolitical and economic security. This synthesis directly calls into question the commonsense view that national security and economic competitiveness are…

The Welsh language, which is indigenous to Wales, is one of six Celtic languages. It is spoken by 562,000 speakers, 19% of the population of Wales, according to the 2011 U.K. Census, and it is estimated that it is spoken by a further 200,000 residents elsewhere in the United Kingdom. No exact figures exist for the undoubted thousands of other…

As a language, Irish is unique to Ireland and is, therefore, of crucial importance to the identity of the Irish people, to Irish culture and to world heritage. The Irish language however has had a turbulent and traumatic history and has endured a complex and varied relationship with the Irish people. Since the foundation of the Irish Free State,…

English-only policies and the expiration of the "Bilingual Education Act," which is now replaced by "No Child Left Behind," make it clear that English is the official language of schools in the United States with the emphasis moved from the goal of maintaining students' home languages while learning English to a focus of ignoring minority…

Teachers' work is changing rapidly worldwide but is rarely a topic of sustained focus in the literature on teaching English as an additional language. Despite this lack of robust scholarly attention, ESL, bilingual, and content specialists working in primary, secondary, and tertiary contexts contend with the demands of changing demographics and…

There is a growing recognition of the need for Americans who are proficient in languages other than English; however, there is a great disconnect between these needs, state English-only education policies, and current federal education policy as realized through the No Child Left Behind Act (NLCB) of 2001. These policies are moving the country in…

For decades bilingual education in the United States has faced political adversity to varying degrees. Having survived several waves of English-only activism since the late 1970s, these programs seem unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Research has increasingly demonstrated their superiority to all-English approaches for educating English-language…

Early federal government policies for American indigenous people alternated between extermination and assimilation. Imposing the colonists' and immigrants' language on indigenous people was important for achieving the latter. In the 1970-90's, federally funded grants for bilingual education for indigenous schools were offered to accommodate Native…

In this article, the authors describe the results of research that explored how Proposition 227--a measure that mandates English immersion instruction for all English language learners--has affected bilingual teachers at varying points in their professional development. The perspectives of preservice, novice and veteran bilingual teachers offer…