Editor's Introduction
Virginia González
Full Text in PDF | Full Text in HTML

Parental Involvement in Education: Attitudes and Activities of Spanish-Speakers as Affected by Training
Cynthia Duke Gitelman Brilliant
George Washington University
This study compared school-related attitudes and activities of Spanish-speaking parents who participated in the Parent Resource Person Group (experimental group N = 47) with those who did not (control group N = 84). Low response by culturally and linguistically diverse parents to surveys is often misinterpreted as a lack of interest in their children’s education. The author maintains that parents’ lack familiarity with schools and resources and schools’ lack culturally appropriate research methodology and cross-cultural sensitivity. Study subjects received surveys, calls, and postcards in Spanish. A small sample (N = 8) participated in telephone interviews. Findings revealed that the group receiving parent liaison training participated in a wider variety of school-related activities more frequently. Language and cultural issues impact the type and frequency of parental involvement. Non response does not equate with not caring.
Full Text in PDF | Full Text in HTML

Bilingual Education Teachers’ Beliefs and Their Relation to Self-Reported Practices
Belinda Bustos Flores
University of Texas at San Antonio
This exploratory survey study investigated teachers’ beliefs about the nature of knowledge and how these beliefs influenced self-reported practices. An epistemological framework was used to explore these bilingual teachers’ beliefs (N = 176). A bi-methodological approach was used to analyze the data. Themes for open-ended responses were identified and triangulated with descriptive findings. Multivariate analysis determined the relationships between variables. Findings demonstrated that bilingual teachers have specific beliefs about how bilingual children learn. Results indicated that prior experiences do influence bilingual teachers’ beliefs, especially professional teaching. A theoretical, philosophically grounded teacher preparation program is considered vital in the preparation of effective teachers, for there to be a congruity between beliefs and practices. Lastly, to understand classroom realities, the exploration of teachers’ beliefs, formations of beliefs, and the influence of beliefs on teaching practices must continue.
Full Text in PDF | Full Text in HTML

The Expected and Unexpected Literacy Outcomes of Bilingual Students
Anita C. Hernández
Stanford University
The purpose of the study is to compare the writing proficiencies of first- and second-language learners and to examine their teachers’ beliefs about the writing students produce. The four fifth-graders were nominated by their teachers as either strong or weak writers. Text analysis methods were used to analyze the writing proficiencies manifested in the compositions and interviews with the teachers about their views on writing. The results suggest that the writing skills of strong second-language children writers are virtually indistinguishable from those of strong first-language children. Furthermore, the weak second-language writers in this study did not lag significantly behind the first-language writers. Finally, parents’ informal Spanish-language instruction, coupled with formal English instruction, was sufficient for some bilinguals to write in Spanish. The study has implications for expanding the L1 and L2 relationship–L2 can support expanding L1 literacy. It also provides direction for the type of writing instruction that second-language learners considered weak writers need in order to become strong.
Full Text in PDF | Full Text in HTML

The Role of Prefabricated Language in Young Children’s Second Language Acquisition
Natsuko Shibata Perera
San Francisco State University
This study investigates how young learners of English as a second language become both capable of socializing in and linguistically creative in English, through the use of prefabricated language (PL). Four preschool Japanese children in two-way immersion programs were observed from the stages of single-word to multi-word utterances. Along with journals kept by the observer and the subjects’ parents, each subject’s conversations in school were tape recorded once a week. The utterances were transcribed and coded according to the definitions of PL, analyzed PL and creative language. The utterances of peers and teachers were examined to determine if interactions enhanced PL analysis. The results show that most of the novel sentences were constructed from PL or analyzed PL, but not from the free combination of words. Although the study did not find clear evidence that no internal process was necessary for the creative process, it implies that there is an important role for PL as a scaffold for linguistic creativity. The study provides pedagogical implications for the use and analysis of PL in immersion classrooms.
Full Text in PDF | Full Text in HTML

Teachers’ Opinions About the Theoretical and Practical Aspects of the Use of Native Language Instruction for Language Minority Students: A Cross-Sectional Study
Francisco Ramos
Florida International University
The results of studies analyzing teachers’ opinions about the theoretical and practical aspects of the use of native language instruction for language minority students appear to reflect a clear discrepancy: There is strong support for the underlying theory, while there is less support for its practical implementation. The present study analyzed 218 K–8 teachers’ responses to a questionnaire dealing with the aforementioned issue. In addition, the study also examined which factors influenced their opinions, and whether their opinions varied across different grades (K–2nd, 3rd–4th, 5th–8th). Consistent with previous research, support for the theoretical principles underlying the use of the students’ native language was strong. Support for its practical implementation was less positive. No clear predictors of attitudes toward the issue being investigated were found. Alongside, no significant variations in opinions were found among the groups in which the teachers were clustered (K–2, 3–4, 5–8). The results of the present study appear to indicate that teachers were guided by their own beliefs at the time of answering the survey. The need for more research in this area is underscored, as is the need to incorporate and take into consideration teachers’ personal opinions, feedback, and input at the time of designing teacher preparation programs.
Full Text in PDF | Full Text in HTML

Community Language Resources in Dual Language Schooling
Patrick H. Smith
Universidad de las Américas-Puebla
This ethnographic case study was concerned with the role of community-based, minority-language resources in dual language schooling, and their influence on the use of Spanish by children from English-speaking and Spanish-speaking homes. Integrating theory from the fields of language planning, language revitalization, community participation, and funds of knowledge, the study triangulated data from participant observation in classrooms; interviews with educators, parents, and community members; and document and archival analysis. Examination of minority-language use at an established, highly regarded dual language school and of the shifting patterns of language dominance in the Mexican American neighborhood surrounding it revealed that the minority-language resources most immediately available—held by fluent bilingual elders and recent immigrants from Mexico—were less likely to be incorporated into planned curriculum than the knowledge and experiences of majority-language parents and elite bilinguals. This finding is attributed to the social distance between educators and neighborhood families, the ambivalence of Mexican American parents and school staff toward the use of non-standard varieties of Spanish in schooling, and the need for greater awareness of processes of language shift and loss. Implications for dual language practice and further research are discussed.
Full Text in PDF | Full Text in HTML

Book Review
Language, Power, and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire
By Jim Cummins
Reviewed by John E. Petrovic and Susan Olmstead
Full Text in PDF | Full Text in HTML