The Families First program in Oregon's Marion County Education Service District provides 130 Hispanic families with the support, resources, and reinforcement needed to participate in the culturally appropriate education of their preschool children in a home environment. Besides attending twice-monthly topical meetings, one member of each family…

A University of Yucatan (Mexico) professor who taught a Mayan linguistics course to indigenous teachers in Mayan discusses three issues that are central to understanding how indigenous education interacts with pan-Maya identity: the importance of locally developed Maya literature, the symbols used to define Maya culture, and a conflict over Maya…

Surveys completed by 218 K-8 teachers in two southern California school districts examined teacher opinions about using language minority students' native language for their instruction. Support for practical implementation was less positive than for the theoretical principles. No clear predictors of attitudes toward the issue were found,…

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)

Mainstream media spreads misperceptions that American Indian gaming benefits just a few, is not well regulated, and encourages criminal activity. The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act mandates that gaming revenues fund tribal government programs; now that they have their own revenue, tribes are enthusiastically funding educational programs to maintain…

The ongoing debate between advocates of bilingual education and advocates of English-only instruction often fails to acknowledge classroom realities. The author, who has taught native Spanish speaking students in a variety of settings, draws on her experience to explain that not all bilingual programs are the same and that no program will…

This paper reports on a study of 31 Japanese-American adolescents enrolled in a Saturday Japanese heritage school (JHL) in Los Angeles. The study examined the relationship of the participants' sense of ethnic identity, attitudes toward the JHL school and self-assessed proficiency in Japanese. The major finding of the study, consistent with…

This report summarizes Austin Independent School District's prekindergarten program for the 2007-2008 school year.

This article offers ten suggestions for teaching young learners between the age of 7 and 12 based on language-teaching principles. They include supplementing activities with visuals, realia and movement; involving students in making visuals and realia; moving from activity to activity; teaching in themes; using stories and contexts familiar to…

This compilation of resource papers and findings is from a regional workshop on mother-tongue/bilingual literacy programmes for ethnic and linguistic minorities in multilingual settings. It was organized by Asia-Pacific Programme of Education for All (APPEAL), United Nations Educational and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Bangkok, 6-10 December…

This paper reports on the results of a small-scale survey of the attitudes of instructors of non-language subjects towards the use of English as a medium of instruction in Turkish universities, where Turkish is the native language of the great majority of the students. The sample of this study consisted of 100 instructors at the universities in…

This study explored language shift and accommodation among bilingual Mandarin and Tai-gi (also called Hokkien, Holo, Tai-gu, Taiwan Min, Taiwanese) families in Taiwan. From the 1940s until the 1980s the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Taiwan promoted Mandarin Chinese. Recent years have witnessed a shift in policy: since 2001 elementary schools…

A cooperative literacy education program involving Mexico and the United States' border states is documented. The project has three objectives: to (1) implement the Mexican literacy agency's approach to promoting literacy among native Spanish speakers; (2) coordinate U.S./Mexico literacy task force activities; and (3) develop an immigrants' rights…

A study investigating the design of elementary school programs for limited-English-speaking children is reported and the resulting recommendations for a program designed for Hispanic migrant children in a Washington school are presented. The three major issues addressed include: the appropriate amount of instruction in native language arts; how to…

Many of the institutions that have helped children deal with the challenge of growing up, such as small towns and extended families, are disappearing or changing, and as a consequence schools are faced with greater responsibilities. Educators must reexamine what they do to acknowledge and validate the home and family, and must extend the…