BRJ Online

As we reviewed the contents selected for this volume of BRJ, I was impressed with the pervasive tone of struggle in its pages. These articles are about parent struggle, student struggle, and teacher struggle, not only to learn English, but to also preserve home languages and cultures. They are a reminder that we err when we define bilingual education too narrowly as just another method for teaching English. We believe, however, that while transitional bilingual education can be a useful tool for teaching English in broader forms of bilingual education can accomplish much more.

Two-way bilingual programs have the potential to promote bilingualism, biliteracy, and pluralism in minority and majority group students who study together in two languages. This paper examines how a focal group of Mexican-background middle school students enrolled in a two-way maintenance bilingual program learned to value English over Spanish at school. Evidence supporting students’ choice of English over their native language came from close analysis of interactional patterns with peers and teachers in classes and informal settings and from students’ explanations of their lived school experiences in interviews over a three year period during middle school. Elements of the hidden curriculum, instructional practices, and assessment policy served to devalue students’ native linguistic cultural capital compelling them to use English in the classroom and within peer culture.

Multiple Embedded Scaffolds:
Support for English Speakers in a Two-way Spanish Immersion Kindergarten

Suzanne F. Peregoy
San Francisco State University

Owen F. Boyle
San Jose State University

Abstract

The present research focuses on opening activities in two bilingual Spanish immersion Kindergarten classrooms in northern California, Creekside and Seaside, in which similar numbers of native Spanish speakers and native English speakers were instructed primarily through Spanish. This study analyzes ways in which teachers structured opening activities to ensure comprehension and participation by children when the youngsters had little or no knowledge of the language of instruction, Spanish. Routines are analyzed in terms of scaffolding provided, with the concept of multiple embedded scaffolds proposed to explain how native English speakers are supported in language acquisition and content learning through a language that is new to them. Analysis revealed specific communication strategies such as functional repetition and the use of non-verbal cues to meaning that scaffolded comprehension. In addition, the teachers modeled language use themselves and structured events so that native Spanish speakers would model appropriate responses for non-Spanish proficient children to emulate. Finally, in the curriculum routines, teachers increased the conceptual and linguistic complexity of the content placed in the slots created by the routine, continually challenged children to higher levels of language performance, and engaged their participation in their zones of proximal development.

Designing a Model-Based Methodology for Science Instruction:
Lessons from a Bilingual Classroom

This study reports on findings from the “Science Theater/Teatro de Ciencias” (sTc) project. The goal of sTc was to explore the potential of using student-generated computer models as a medium for elementary school students to develop richer and more meaningful explanations of science content. A secondary goal was to effectively engage culturally and linguistically diverse students in science learning. This paper reports on findings from a second/third grade two-way bilingual classroom. Conceptually, I rely upon a sociocultural perspective that differs from previous work that has been done using computer models in science classrooms. Specifically, I explore two issues that expand upon this prior work: 1) the potential value of using computer modeling for science learning in the primary elementary grades; and 2) the role that clarifying one’s personal understanding of how science is practiced plays in students’ academic success in school science. My assertion is that model-based science instruction can provide an effective strategy for mediating the barriers to success in school science that CLD students (as well as many other students) often encounter.

Recent initiatives such as Proposition 227, the Unz Initiative, demonstrate the implications of referenda and other sociocultural and sociopolitical threats to the appropriate education of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Such initiatives often capitalize upon the politicization of the ESL/bilingual education environment in order to threaten quality programming and equitable education for all students. These trends call for a greater emphasis in the professional development and practice of educators toward capacity building for student, family, and program advocacy. This article explores the potential contribution of current educational and related literature in the development of an initial framework for such advocacy.

The purpose of this study was twofold: (a) to examine the linguistic minority parents' perceptions of bilingual education and (b) to investigate their views on bilingual education. This study was motivated by the re-emerging controversy surrounding the issue of whether or not public schools should continue to provide bilingual education programs for linguistic minority students. It was hypothesized that most parents of linguistic minority students did not fully understand the objectives and goals of bilingual education. It was also hypothesized that irrespective of their understanding level, most linguistic minority parents supported bilingual education as long as it provided their children the opportunities to develop English skills while providing them equal access to the core curriculum. Based on a sample of 290 adult subjects, all of whom were of Latino background, the study found that the majority did not know the different models or programs of bilingual education. Nevertheless, three out of four parents (76%) thought that the use of two languages—students' home/primary language and English—facilitated their children's development of English. Interestingly, if provided the option to enroll their children in mainstream classes, two-thirds (67%) responded that they would prefer that their children be placed in English-only classes.

How Can Language Minority Parents Help Their Children Become Bilingual In Familial Context?
A Case Study of a Language Minority Mother and Her Daughter

Language Minority (LM) parents who communicate on a daily basis with their children have a crucial influence on the development of their children's bilingualism. It is better for them to take initial actions to enable their children to develop both their first language (L1) and second language (L2), and to get together with the two respective cultures, rather than wait passively for schools and communities to reach out to them. The present case study illustrated this topic by presenting the author's personal observations of her 12-year-old daughter in Hawaii over a five-month period. It addressed the issue from two perspectives: (1) LM parents' attitudes toward L1/L2 and the cultures (valuing the heritage and respecting the new), and (2) Parent-child interactions (family talk aiming at keeping up L1 and bridging the generation gap; academic study confirming the interdependent hypothesis of L1 and L2; two-language nurturing home environment including parents' own involvement in learning by means of L1 and L2, and concurrent use of the two languages at home.) The study showed that LM parents' positive attitudes toward both languages and cultures and supportive interactions with their children at home are very important to the children's bilingual education and identity establishment in the new environment.

One hundred and six Vietnamese parents were given a questionnaire to assess their attitudes toward bilingual education and its underlying principles. The majority of parents preferred that their children be enrolled in a classroom where Vietnamese was part of the curriculum regardless of English proficiency. Parents believed that bilingual education allows children to keep up in subject matter while acquiring English, that developing literacy in Vietnamese would facilitate their English acquisition, that learning subject matter first in the primary language would make the subject matter more understandable in English, that bilingualism had practical, career, and cognitive related advantages, and that it was necessary to maintain language and culture.

Carla Meskill, Jonathan Mossop, and Richard Bates
University at Albany State University of New York

We have moved in the direction of accepting the postmodern values of opacity, playful experimentation, and navigation of surface as privileged ways of knowing (Turkle, 1995, p. 267).

Electronic text (e-text) is any information displayed via a computer screen including audio, video, graphics, and the written word. As the amount of our reading and writing with electronic texts increases, so do the number of questions concerning the literacy implications of that activity. English Language Learners (ELLs) represent a rich window through which we can begin to glimpse the ways electronic texts are shaping the language and literacy of the electronic age. Given the special skills, abilities, and diversity of experiences of ELLs, we propose that the unique features of e-text can effectively interact with these qualities in such a way as to help us better understand both the goals, processes, and special characteristics of the bilingual experience and the acquisition of electronic literacy skills. Moreover, interaction of the emerging bilingual's qualities with the unique features of electronic texts provides a novel perspective from which both evolving definitions of electronic literacy and second language and literacy instructional practices can be probed.

Living and Teaching Along the U.S./Mexico Border:
Midwestern Student Interns' Cultural Adaptation Experiences in Texas Schools

It has been estimated that by the year 2000, only 5% of teachers will be minorities, although minorities will make up about one third of the total school enrollment in the United States (Educational Commission of the States, 1990). Through "The Inter-Campus Enhancement of Language Minority Recruitment and Bilingual Education Project," directed by Dr. Carlos Ovando of Indiana University, and working in collaboration with The University of Texas-Pan American's College of Education, select students from Indiana University spend 6 to 15 weeks teaching children and adolescents in the Rio Grande Valley schools in South Texas—over 90% who are Hispanics of Mexican American descent. This ethnographic article describes the challenges of cultural adaptation of six student interns who chose to live and teach in a small university town along the U.S./Mexico border, and it generates many questions regarding the awesome task of increasing the number of educators prepared to serve Spanish language populations of bilingual classroom settings in the United States.

This paper recounts the journey taken by a young Chinese-Canadian artist and her high school art teacher as they begin to negotiate who they are in a city and a school that has recently seen the arrival of a large number of immigrants from Hong Kong. Analyzing the student's art work as a pedagogical project that not only promotes the positive development of self-identities but that also challenges anti-immigrant ideas that structure relationships both inside and outside the school, I re-tell the story of how a group of students and their teacher use art to work across linguistic differences and resist linguistic discrimination.

Elicited Response in the Pre-Kindergarten Setting with a Dual Language Program: Good or Bad Idea?

While both positive and negative implications of bilingual educational programs on school children have been widely observed, the aspect of elicited response in a student's weakest language has virtually been ignored. Even with evidence that shows how vital it is to maintain a child's natural language and culture through dual language programs, bilingual teachers still fail to question the necessity of or focus on the practical elements of eliciting response from students, i.e., using different strategies such as code switching or peer scaffolding to get students to use their native language, in this case Spanish. Through the use of the Language Experience Approach, this study examines the role of elicited response with a small sample of English and Spanish speaking participants in an early childhood classroom. In addition, this article provides an overview of differing philosophies and reasons behind questioning the importance of elicited response and the role a teacher plays in this process. Several issues are explored throughout this discussion, such as the conditions, variables, and social influences that affect second language acquisition, and the implications of different levels of language exposure in peer groups. While it is impossible to derive an absolute and definitive solution from the results, they do set a precedent for further, much needed research in the area of elicited response.

BOOK REVIEW:

Subtractive schooling: U.S.-Mexican youth and the politics of caring
by A. Valenzuela

Reviewed by Donna Eder

BOOK REVIEW:

New concepts for new challenges: Professional development for teachers of immigrant youth
by J. González & L. Darling-Hammond

Reviewed by Betty Merchant