While previous studies have shown that drawing upon funds of knowledge benefits teaching and learning in many educational settings, there is little inquiry into funds of knowledge in Chinese heritage language education. Employing ethnographic methods, I explored the evidence of funds of knowledge in early childhood settings in a community-based…

This study was conducted within the context of bilingual Arabic-Hebrew medium preschools in Israel which were established to incorporate instruction in the native languages of both majority and minority children in the classroom. Bilingual education in various settings produces a wide variety of outcomes in terms of language proficiency, cultural…

Disparities emanating from South Africa's apartheid history still pose a number of challenges to the country, especially in education. Since the transition to democracy in 1994, the prescribed government school curriculum has undergone several revisions in an endeavour to set standards and provide instruction of a high quality. On the language…

This qualitative study examined children's concept formation and writing emergence from the perspective of graphical multi-signification by observing the free drawing activities provided by four girls and six boys, aged four to five, in a Chinese class at a Chinese heritage language school in the USA. Children's capacity for graphical…

The paper looks at developments in Greek language curricula in Cyprus during three periods: (1) the post-independence era from 1960 to the partition of the island in 1974; (2) the post-partition era from 1974 to 2003; and (3) the contemporary era, including the accession of Cyprus to the European Union in 2004, and the introduction of a new Greek…

Heritage learners comprise a substantial proportion of second language learners, including L2 Korean learners. Previous studies have shown that the vast majority of heritage language learners display weakness in orthographic accuracy. Due to their previous extended exposure to oral discourse and limited experience in written language, heritage…

Heritage language education has come to prominence worldwide. Despite the increasing number of Chinese heritage language learners and Chinese schools in the USA, little attention has been given to teachers. This study investigated three heritage language teachers' professional identity and beliefs about curriculum and instructional practices in a…

Vietnamese, like other immigrant languages, experiences decline in various forms from the time that its speakers first arrive in the US, a process that gathers pace in the second generation, and often leads to a near-complete loss of the language in the third generation. The article deals with the ways in which Vietnamese-Americans have attempted…

This article presents results of a study on a weekend Chinese community school in a mid-Atlantic state that looks at parents' perceptions of the challenges the school faced in teaching Chinese to heritage versus non-heritage learners. Survey and qualitative interviews with parents show differences in their expectations regarding teacher…

Throughout the English-speaking world, children from bilingual backgrounds are being educated in mainstream classrooms where they have little or no opportunity to use their mother tongue. Second and third generation children, in particular, are assumed to be learning sufficiently through English only. This study investigated how British…

Learning to read and write is a psycholinguistic and social process. That is why mother-tongue speakers of minority African languages find learning to read in the language they speak is a qualitatively better learning experience than learning to read in a language they are unfamiliar with. However, reading methodologies used for teaching reading…

Following the results of the Ife Six-Year Primary Project designed to use an indigenous Nigerian language as a medium of instruction in primary schools, some suggestions have been made to introduce it in all Nigerian primary schools. This study investigates the attitudes of student teachers towards mother-tongue instruction. Data for the study…

Examines the role of literature in the acquisition of literacy in English as a Second Language and Nigerian mother tongues. Provides a critique of the Nigerian literacy instruction model, and discusses how to help students acquire effective and efficient literacy. (Author/VWL)