In studies of minority language education, researchers tend to base their arguments on the assumption that knowledge empowers and ignorance disempowers. In this article, however, I show two alternative dynamics of knowledge and relations of dominance by drawing on my ethnographic fieldwork at a secondary school in Aotearoa/New Zealand in 1997-8.…

The teaching and learning of Irish in primary school is both an important educational issue and central to the national language revitalization effort. The findings of Irish-language programme evaluations, therefore, are invariably scrutinized very closely by different sectors. This paper examines how the later stages of a major evaluation took…

This paper is based on an analysis of interviews, conducted at three primary schools in Melbourne, which sought to explore the determinants of code-switching between English and Chinese. Specifically, it examined school education and other specific possible determinants of code switching amongst Chinese-Australian bilingual children. The specific…

Many Chinese and Taiwanese parents in the United States see benefits of Chinese schools in providing their children the opportunity to learn Chinese culture and language. The results of this qualitative study involving interviews with thirteen Chinese and Taiwanese parents indicated that there were three main reasons why parents want to send their…

This essay focuses on the status of Spanish within the American educational system. The central argument of the article is that the high number of native speakers of Spanish and non-native learners of the language in the United States should not mask a number of serious issues facing the language in that country.

This study examines the role of schooling and ethnic community contact in ethnolinguistic and cultural identity construction and heritage language maintenance through the surveys and narratives of three groups of Japanese-English bilingual youths and their parents in Sydney, Australia, as a part of a larger longitudinal study from childhood. The…

A growing transnational migration trend among (South) Korean families brings heterogeneity to the Korean-American communities in the US in terms of educational practices and identity. Based on interviews with Korean mothers, this study discusses how two groups of Koreans, Korean immigrants and early study abroad sojourners, enacted and adopted…

This article discusses the implications and complexities of Canada's multicultural policies for aboriginal students in its post-secondary education systems. The author, a Pakistani-Canadian multicultural educator, interviewed an Aboriginal-Canadian multicultural educator, to discuss the cultural differences, divisions, and resistances between…

Cambodian Americans are a fairly recent language minority group in the United States; most families arrived in the United States as refugees during the 1980s. Over the past 30 years, there has been great concern in the community regarding the maintenance loss of their native Khmer language. This article provides an historical and contemporary…

In today's sociopolitical climate in the United States, nativist anti-immigrant movements drive the marginalization and disempowerment of Latino schoolchildren. Latino teachers need more than a shared ethnicity with their students to help them develop their full potential. Bilingual educators and proponents of dual language programs must…

This qualitative study investigates attitudes toward heritage language (HL) maintenance among Chinese immigrant parents and their second-generation children. Specific attention is given to exploring (1) what attitudes are held by the Chinese parents and children toward Chinese language maintenance in the USA, (2) what efforts are engaged in by the…

This article, part of a larger study, examines three middle-class, Hispanic Canadian families' conceptualizations of language, culture, and identity. Via an analysis of interview data, the findings indicate that the parents assigned diverse meanings to heritage language development (HLD) and held high expectations for their children's formation of…

This paper examines the degree to which language shift or maintenance is obtained across four generations in Belarus. Linguistic homogeneity and heterogeneity receive particular attention as potential contributing factors to language shift or maintenance in the home, arguably the last bastion in terms of language maintenance. In an effort to…

Although 39 federally recognized American Indian tribes are headquartered in the state of Oklahoma, it comes as some surprise that there were no tribal colleges in the state until this century. During the past eight years, however, tribal colleges have been cropping up throughout the state, including the Comanche Nation College, the College of the…

This article examines current efforts to revitalise, stabilise, and maintain Indigenous languages in the USA. Most Native American languages are no longer acquired as a first language by children. They are nonetheless languages of identity and heritage, and in this sense can and should be considered mother tongues. The article begins with a…