In an open letter, 19 educators in Navajo schools make recommendations for regulations to implement the Native American Languages Act. Recommendations are concerned with development of culturally sensitive curriculum and materials, teacher education, teacher certification, availability of immersion programs, school environment encouraging Native…

Among over 600 Arizona students in grades 1-8 in maintenance bilingual programs, fluent Spanish-speaking students outperformed limited-Spanish-speaking students on a measure of Spanish reading, mathematics, social studies, and science achievement; girls achieved higher reading scores than boys; and 16 of 18 grade mean scores were equal to or…

Examines key educational policies and practices that limit opportunities for bilingual education teachers to obtain academic language proficiency in Spanish. Bilingual-education teacher training cannot make up for ground lost by educators who lack prior attainment of math and science Spanish-language skills. Effective Spanish-language competency…

Describes development since 1985 of a Maori immersion school for children aged 5-17. Provides background on Maori and New Zealand history, the Waikato tribe and the community, indigenous language revitalization efforts, and national school restructuring that facilitated Maori immersion programs. Discusses the school's educational practices,…

An ethnographic study of a freshman composition class at the Universidad Autonoma de Santa Domingo (Dominican Republic) examined classroom practices and behaviors of the professor and students as students learned to improve their native-language reading and writing skills. Differences from U.S. classrooms are discussed in terms of the needs of…

Personal life experiences and metaphors illustrate how the Sto:lo people's world view is reflected in their Halq'emeylem language, in which identity, language, and place are inextricably interconnected. A brief comparison of Native and Western world views demonstrates how world views encompass people's understanding of time, history, self, and…

Reviews three new books about the current political battle over bilingual education, focusing on: bilingual education theory and the importance of transformative pedagogy; political analysis of bilingual education and key issues in indigenous language loss; and politics of multiculturalism. Discusses the maturation of bilingual education since…

Provides an overview of the articles in this issue of the Tribal College Journal, which demonstrate how tribal colleges are gradually creating places where Native languages are safe. Asserts that a place where the language is honored is a place that education, too, becomes honored, and that recognizing Native languages leads to self-esteem and…

A Japanese wife and American husband raised their daughter to be bilingual by using the "one-parent/one-language approach," in which each parent speaks only their native language with her. Upon reaching school age, her bilingualism was maintained through home schooling in America, an experimental school in Japan, and exposure to Japanese and…

Focuses on the Sisseton Wahpeton Community College, a "tribal college" of the Dakota Indians in Sisseton, South Dakota. Comments from college president William Harjo LoneFight regarding the philosophy of the institution and its integration of the Dakota language and tribal cultural values. Looks at various programs and institutions that…

This paper explores the effectiveness of initial vernacular education for successful transfer to English. The data is drawn from the personal, innovative experiences of a local vernacular elementary school teacher in Papua New Guinea, who helped individual children to gain literacy skills in the local vernacular. As a result, the children were…

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…

This paper is an analysis of two conceptions of bilingualism that exist in parallel in China. One is traditional bilingualism referring to the use of a native minority language and standard Chinese by minority groups and the other, seen as bilingualism with modern characteristics, is a modern-day phenomenon in which the majority Han group aspire…

This paper proposes a theoretical framework for the development of curricula for Japanese heritage language schools. Although these schools provide most of the Japanese heritage language (JHL) instruction available to elementary and secondary school pupils, they have received little attention or support from the academic community. Specifically,…

This paper reviews studies of teacher cognition in relation to the teaching of grammar in first, second, and foreign language classrooms. Teacher cognition encompasses a range of psychological constructs and these are reflected in the research reviewed here. Thus, in turn, I discuss studies of teachers' declarative knowledge about grammar, of…