As our world becomes increasingly multicultural in nature, multilingual skills constitute an everyday phenomenon in schools. Since most of the second-language research has focused on school-age students, more research had to be conducted with language-minority students at the kindergarten level in order for psychologists and educators to develop…

Research in multilingual societies often attends to the micro level of linguistic interactions, as linguistic minority speakers negotiate their way through a majority-language world. However, this research does not always engage with the social, political and historical contexts that produce and reproduce the conditions within which some…

We contend that generalizability (G) theory allows the design of psychometric approaches to testing English-language learners (ELLs) that are consistent with current thinking in linguistics. We used G theory to estimate the amount of measurement error due to code (language or dialect). Fourth- and fifth-grade ELLs, native speakers of…

Language rights embedded in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Department of Justice, 1982) and implemented in the provincial education system have allowed parents to choose French language schools over their English alternative. But creation established by law does not fully protect the continuation of such a school. The image that it…

Concern is growing about the education of the students regarded as least likely to succeed in school. Labeled "reluctant," "at risk," "disadvantaged," "alienated," "resistant," "educational deprived," or what Rose (1995) calls "educational underprepared," these students come disproportionately from low SES (socioeconomic status) families and from…

In many respects, the state of minority language reflects the dynamics of the society at large. At this time, many minority languages are threatened by modernization and urbanization, although others find support in new regional autonomy and movements toward cultural preservation. The 17 chapters of this collection describe the status of a number…

This paper presentes the preliminary findings from a doctoral research on the ethnocultural preparation of teachers in western Canada. This three-stage study explored what steps, if any, are taken to prepare teachers so that they might be successful educators of ethnoculturally diverse student populations. Data were collected from 450 teachers…

This report is the culmination of a process that began in 1994, at a planning meeting to determine whether there was a sufficient knowledge base to inform the development of a research agenda on the education of language minority children. A committee was established to review what is known about the linguistic, cognitive, and social processes…

This report describes a program that was designed to end the isolation typically experienced by language minority students in traditional bilingual education and to provide language majority students the opportunity to acquire proficiency in a second Language. The program served 4 classes of approximately 22 students each (85 students) in…

To evaluate the implementation of the Bilingual Education and English as a Second Language (ESL) programs, the Houston Independent School District (Texas) studied the participation and academic achievement of limited English proficient (LEP) students who participated in these programs in the 1995-96 school year. The Fall 1995 database reported…

The "Lau" decision of 1974, which was related to the education of Chinese-speaking students in San Francisco (California), ushered in new programs, teaching approaches, frameworks, legislation, and government agencies designed to redress fundamental inequities in the educational opportunities available to language minority students. This…

Two models of content-based second language instruction are compared. The two models, French language immersion and mainstreaming, are illustrated in two case studies that focus on how minority language children fare in kindergarten programs. The first case study is of a native Cantonese-speaking child enrolled in an early French immersion program…

This edited volume provides an overview of issues surrounding language loss from sociological, economic, and linguistic perspectives. Four parts cover general issues in language loss; language-community responses, including native language instruction in school, community, and home; the value of language diversity and what is lost when a language…

This book looks at the implications of educational practices in communities that are differentiated by issues of language, culture, and technology. Trifonas argues that a "community" is at once a gathering of like-minded individuals in solidarity of purpose and conviction, and also a gathering that excludes others. The chapters in this…

Roma, or "gypsies," are the main poverty risk group in many countries of central and eastern Europe. Living standards for the Roma have deteriorated more severely during the region's transition to a market economy than they have for other population groups, and Roma have been poorly positioned to take advantage of emerging economic and…