Language Diversity And Education

Graduate-level text for students of language & linguistics, and students of education; provides a current & well-informed overview and theoretical perspective on the issue of equitable educational treatment for students from diverse language backgrounds.

It’s no secret that, in most American classrooms, students are expected to master standardized American English and the conventions of Edited American English if they wish to succeed. Language Diversity in the Classroom: From Intention to Practice works to realign these conceptions through a series of provocative yet evenhanded essays that explore the ways we have enacted and continue to enact our beliefs in the integrity of the many languages and Englishes that arise both in the classroom and in professional communities. Edited by Geneva Smitherman and Victor Villanueva, the collection was motivated by a survey project on language awareness commissioned by the National Council of Teachers of English and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. All actively involved in supporting diversity in education, the contributors address the major issues inherent in linguistically diverse classrooms: language and racism, language and nationalism, and the challenges in teaching writing while respecting and celebrating students’ own languages. Offering historical and pedagogical perspectives on language awareness and language diversity, the essays reveal the nationalism implicit in the concept of a “standard English,” advocate alternative training and teaching practices for instructors at all levels, and promote the respect and importance of the country’s diverse dialects, languages, and literatures. Contributors include Geneva Smitherman, Victor Villanueva, Elaine Richardson, Victoria Cliett, Arnetha F. Ball, Rashidah Jammi` Muhammad, Kim Brian Lovejoy, Gail Y. Okawa, Jan Swearingen, and Dave Pruett. The volume also includes a foreword by Suresh Canagarajah and a substantial bibliography of resources about bilingualism and language diversity.

*THIS BOOK WILL SOON BECOME AVAILABLE AS OPEN ACCESS BOOK* This book examines multiple facets of language diversity and mathematics education. It features renowned authors from around the world and explores the learning and teaching of mathematics in contexts that include multilingual classrooms, indigenous education, teacher education, blind and deaf learners, new media and tertiary education. Each chapter draws on research from two or more countries to illustrate important research findings, theoretical developments and practical strategies. This open access book examines multiple facets of language diversity

Diversity - social, cultural, linguistic and ethnic - poses a challenge to all educational systems. This book aims to address these issues by examining current policy and its implications, pedagogical practice and responses to the challenge of diversity that go beyond the language of schooling. This volume will appeal to anyone involved in the educational integration of immigrant children and adolescents.

This edited book uses the concept of diversity in child foreign language education as a major organizing principle. Since a foreign language, most typically English, is taught globally to an increasing number of children, the variability in the process and varied learning outcomes are inescapable phenomena. This book has been constructed on the premise that heterogeneity, first, concerns young language learners, who due to the disparity in the pace of development need appropriately tailored educational solutions, and, second, it refers to a diversity of contexts in which learning takes place. The contexts can be defined on a macroscale (e.g. different countries), mesoscale (e.g. different institutions), and microscale (e.g. specific learner groups). The book consists of four thematic strands. In Part One the learner-internal causes of heterogeneity of young language learners are clarified. Part Two presents a sample of classroom studies in which learner variables, such as gender, learner preferences, and special needs are taken into account. Part Three looks at teaching materials and how they meet learners’ needs. Finally, Part Four highlights diversity issues that teachers should be prepared to face.

This volume provides an up-to-date review of sociolinguistic research and practice aimed at improving education for students who speak vernacular varieties of U.S. English, English-based Creole languages, and non-English languages, and presents socioculturally based approaches that acknowledge and build on the linguistic and cultural resources students bring into the school.

Language is perhaps the most common issue that surfaces in debates over school reform, and plays a vital role in virtually everything we are involved. This edited volume explores linguistic apartheid, or the disappearance of certain languages through cultural genocide by dominant European colonizers and American neoconservative groups. These groups have historically imposed hegemonic languages, such as English and French, on colonized people at the expense of the native languages of the latter. The book traces this form of apartheid from the colonial era to the English-only movement in the United States, and proposes alternative ways to counter linguistic apartheid that minority groups and students have faced in schools and society at large. Contributors to this volume provide a historical overview of the way many languages labeled as inferior, minority, or simply savage have been attacked and pushed to the margins, discriminating against and attempting to silence the voice of those who spoke and continue to speak these languages. Further, they demonstrate the way and the extent to which such actions have affected the cultural life, learning process, identity, and the subjective and material conditions of linguistically and historically marginalized groups, including students.

Winner of an American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award and Choice Magazine’s Outstanding Academic book award, and voted one of Teacher Magazine’s “great books,” Other People’s Children has sold over 150,000 copies since its original hardcover publication. This anniversary paperback edition features a new introduction by Delpit as well as new framing essays by Herbert Kohl and Charles Payne. In a radical analysis of contemporary classrooms, MacArthur Award–winning author Lisa Delpit develops ideas about ways teachers can be better “cultural transmitters” in the classroom, where prejudice, stereotypes, and cultural assumptions breed ineffective education. Delpit suggests that many academic problems attributed to children of color are actually the result of miscommunication, as primarily white teachers and “other people’s children” struggle with the imbalance of power and the dynamics plaguing our system. A new classic among educators, Other People’s Children is a must-read for teachers, administrators, and parents striving to improve the quality of America’s education system.