Criticisms against bilingual education policy are myopic and focus on nostalgic notions of Americanization and assimilation. Bilingual education supports heritage-language students' cultural identities and expands their contexts of choice, thus developing their self-determination and preparing them to participate in democracy. Federal policies…

Focus groups and interviews with 37 teachers and 4 principals examined their roles and experiences in Papahana Kaiapuni, a K-12 program taught entirely in Hawaiian. Teachers integrated Hawaiian culture into the curriculum and viewed the program as a model of school reform for Native Hawaiians. The program transformed many teachers' views of…

Attitudes toward bilingualism in Ireland were explored among 38 fifth-grade students attending Irish-medium or English-medium schools, their parents, and staff. English-medium school students indicated little need for Irish and valued bilingualism in other European languages but not Irish. Irish-medium students found Irish useful immediately and…

This paper is based on an observational study concerning the effectiveness of elementary education. It was conducted in a rural area near Alotau, the provincial capital of the Milne Bay Province, with a special focus on the Maiwala Elementary School. In this paper, the author first briefly describes what elementary education is and how it has been…

Many parents in the United States who speak and value a language other than English feel torn-between wanting their children to develop age-appropriate fluency and literacy in the language of their heritage, and wanting their children to acquire English as quickly and flawlessly as possible. When parents support communication in and acquisition of…

Writing picture compositions is part of the requirements for the mother tongue language learning in Singapore primary schools. For Chinese as a mother tongue, the prevailing materials used for learning picture composition are confined to only black-and-white drawn pictures. This has caused some problems: (1) not many good and suitable…

This regional dossier aims to provide concise, descriptive information and basic educational statistics about minority language education in a specific region of the European Union--Fryslan, one of the twelve provinces of the Netherlands. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors,…

The transcript (translated into English) of a roundtable discussion of literacy among francophone women in Canada begins with the personal narrative of one women who gained literacy skills as an adult. The panel of three specialists in francophone women's literacy in Canada then look at the literacy rate among Canadian women, and the demand for…

The design and development of GRACILE, a collaborative learning environment in the domain of Japanese language patterns and expressions, is described. The environment is designed to allow learning goals communication, learning activities negotiation, and collaboration between learners. From a group of student models, a potential development level…

The purpose of this study was to compare the Gilbertian mathetical sequence (MS) with the Skinnerian logical sequence (LS) methodologies in their effectiveness for language teaching. A series of 3 experiments were designed to investigate the effect of MS and LS on the teaching of Japanese Kanji characters to 24 Japanese fifth-graders. The students…

This report summarizes advances in bilingual education that help linguistically and culturally diverse (LCD) students reach high levels of achievement and performance. Factors to be considered include the native language, bilingualism and academic achievement, curriculum, parental and community influences, and programmatic evaluation. The reports…

The directory lists French immersion programs at the elementary and secondary school levels in each province and territory of Canada. They are arranged alphabetically by province or territory, then by city or town within those categories. Data pertain to the 1995-96 school year. Information provided for each region includes general information on…

In response to problems encountered in teaching Spanish to native speakers who had learned Spanish as their first (oral) language but because of their schooling were literate only in English, a study was conducted to explore issues related to development of native-language literacy skills after acquisition of second-language literacy. Two adult…

In a case study, a child's acquisition and maintenance of Chinese (as a first language) and English (as a second language) were documented. The child brought to the United States at age 3.5, acquired English in 2 years and was encouraged to maintain his Chinese skills through a family-based education program. For 6 months the boy was given Chinese…

This volume includes papers delivered at the Ninth Annual International Native American Language Issues (NALI) Institute. Dick Littlebear's keynote address describes the importance of maintaining Native American languages. James Crawford's "Language Freedom and Restriction: A Historical Approach to the Official Language Controversy,"…