"Review of Research in Education: Vol. 38, Language Policy, Politics, and Diversity in Education" explores the role of educational language policies in promoting education as a human right. There are an estimated nearly 7,000 living languages in the world. Yet, despite the extent of language diversity, only a small number of the…

The present study aimed to identify the role of both student- and school-level characteristics in primary school students' achievement in the science curriculum. As societies become more culturally and linguistically diverse, many students enter the classroom with a home language that is different from the language of instruction used at school.…

This article reports the results of an action-research project that examines enhancing students' English learning processes through the selective use of their mother tongues with the aim of overcoming their reluctant attitudes toward learning English in the classroom. This study involves forty ninth-graders from an all-girls public school in…

Using eight waves of longitudinal data on a statewide kindergarten cohort of English learners (ELs), I examined ELs' tenure in language-learning programs and their academic performance following reclassification as fluent English proficient. I employed discrete-time survival analysis to estimate the average time to and grade of reclassification…

This paper investigates the perceptions of teachers from one Sabaot dominated primary school in western Kenya regarding the medium of instruction (MoI) policy in different class levels. While their "ideal" MoI policy bears some resemblance to the official policy which advocates mother tongue (MT) as medium in lower primary and English in…

Global migration has had significant impact on the traditional configuration of the classroom role set. The language teacher may be teaching a group of learners with highly mixed interests, abilities, learning histories and exposures to the target language, while the language learner may be confronted with so many different models of the target…

Purpose: This paper aims to progress the dialogue on language rights in the urban classroom. Research has evidenced how language can serve as a powerful tool in mainstream ideologies; more specifically, the preferred and dominant use of Standard Written English in the American classroom has demonstrated how language serves as a gatekeeper for…

It is well documented that ELLs face significant challenges as they develop literacy skills in their second language (NCES, 2007, 2011). This population is diverse and growing rapidly in Massachusetts and across the nation (Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 2013; NCELA, 2011; Orosco, De Schonewise, De Onis, Klingner,…

The purpose of this study was to investigate Turkish EFL learners' ability in composing cohesive texts in their first language and in English as their foreign language, and to examine whether there are similarities between lexical reiteration cohesive devices they employ in composing cohesive texts both in Turkish and in English. The study was…

The development of critical thinking (CT) skills has become a key goal for educators in first and second language contexts. There is evidence that the use of such activities has still not become widespread in a number of ELT situations. One reason for this may be lack of awareness about how levels of thinking can be conceptualized in ELT…

Collocation is one of the most problematic areas in second language learning and it seems that if one wants to improve his or her communication in another language should improve his or her collocation competence. This study attempts to determine the effect of applying three different kinds of collocation on collocation learning and retention of…

Schools across the country are inadequately prepared to meet the educational needs of English language learners (ELLs), much less the needs of ELLs who also have an intellectual disability (ID). In this exploratory study, three Mexican American elementary students with moderate ID were given vocabulary word instruction in English and Spanish using…

The theories of practice of four novice bilingual teachers regarding their language choices during sheltered English instruction are presented. The investigation followed participants through their preservice program in an urban public university and their first year of teaching in bilingual classrooms. Findings from this study illustrate how…

This paper reports on the oral reading of five grade 2 to 6 isiXhosa (L1) speakers reading isiXhosa (L1) and English (L2) texts. It examines the readers' oral reading miscues (or errors) to understand the extent to which these miscues constitute a language or a literacy problem in this group of readers. Conclusions are that (a) these readers read…

This brief report provides a demographic profile of the students who attended kindergarten in the United States in the 2010-11 school year using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class of 2010-11 (ECLS-K:2011). The ECLS-K:2011 cohort includes students in public and private schools across the United States, students who…