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This study aims to investigate the integration of heritage language and culture in technology-enhanced bilingual education and examine the dominance of the English language and culture in computer-assisted language learning settings.

This research used a narrative inquiry methodology. The data came from semi-structured interviews with 25 bilingual teachers in the Kurdistan region of Iraq and Texas.

The study found a significant bias in the use of technology toward the target language, often at the expense of heritage language and culture. The curricula analyzed were predominantly focused on superficial cultural elements of the target language, leading to a neglect of deeper cultural engagement.

This research highlights the phenomenon of cultural cringe within bilingual education and the skewed use of technology toward the target language.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of computer-assisted language learning on cultural adaptation and language learning in non-traditional classroom settings.

The data of this study came from extended periods of observation, multiple rounds of semi-structured interviews and home visits. Using narrative inquiry, it analyzes an immigrant's journey of language learning and cultural adaptation within a virtual knowledge community.

The findings of this study reveal the profound impact of virtual knowledge communities on enhancing second language learning and facilitating cultural adaptation.

This study offers original insights by demonstrating the transformative power of virtual knowledge communities for the purpose of second language acquisition and cultural adaptation.

This study aims to explore motives behind teachers' and students' use of translanguaging and how they use it in Tanzanian public secondary school classrooms.

Data were collected using interviews and non-participant observations.

The findings indicate that translanguaging was used to facilitate content comprehension, promote classroom interaction and increase students' motivation to learn. Translanguaging was implemented using three strategies: paraphrasing an English text into Kiswahili, translating an English text into its Kiswahili equivalent and word-level translanguaging.

By highlighting the motivations for translanguaging and corresponding strategies associated with translanguaging pedagogy in the Tanzanian context, this study has significant practical implications for teachers and students to showcase their linguistic and multimodal knowledge, while fostering a safe learning space that relates to students' daily experiences.

The study offers new insights into previous research on the role of language-supportive pedagogy appropriate for teachers and students working within bi-/multilingual education settings.

This study aims to examine how teacher candidates (TCs) in Türkiye and the USA navigate their intercultural communication skills in a telecollaboration project.

Forty-eight TCs participated (26 in Türkiye and 22 in the USA) in the study. TCs discussed critical issues in multicultural education on an online learning platform for six weeks. Their discussions were analyzed using content and discourse analysis.

The findings indicated that TCs approached the telecollaborative space as a translingual contact zone and positioned themselves and their interlocutors in the discourse by using the personal pronouns; I, we, you and they. When they positioned themselves using we (people in Türkiye/USA), they spoke on behalf of everyone included in the scope of we. Their interlocutors responded to these positionings either by accepting this positioning and responding with a parallel positioning or by engaging in translingual negotiation strategies to revise the scope of we and sharing some differences/nuances in beliefs and practices in their community.

When TCs talk about their culture and community in a singular manner using we, they frame them as the same across every member in that community. When they ask questions to each other using you, the framing of the questions prime the respondents to sometimes relay their own specific experiences as the norm or consider experiences from different points of view through translingual negotiation strategies. A singular approach to culture(s) may affect the marginalized communities the most because they are lost in this representation, and their experiences and voices are not integrated in the narratives or integrated with stereotypical representation.

Teachers and teacher educators should first pay attention to their language choices, especially use of pronouns, which may communicate inclusion or exclusion in intercultural conversations. Next, they should prepare their students to adopt and practice language choices that communicate respect for cultural diversity and are inclusive of marginalized populations.

Speakers’ pronoun use includes identity construction in discourse by drawing borders around and between communities and cultures with generalization and particularity, and by patrolling those borders to decide who is included and excluded. As a response, interlocutors use pronouns either to acknowledge those borders and respond with corresponding ones from their own context or negotiate alternative representations or further investigate for particularity or complexity. In short, pronouns could lead the direction of intercultural conversations toward criticality and complexity or otherwise, and might be reasons where there are breakdowns in communication or to fix those breakdowns.

This study shows that translingual negotiation strategies have explanatory power to examine how speakers from different language backgrounds negotiate second and third order positionings in the telecollaborative space.

The education of deaf and hard of hearing (d/DHH) students is largely dependent on the preferred mode of communication. Historically, the mode of communication for d/DHH students was determined by society rather than by students and families. This resulted in divisiveness between the Deaf culture and proponents of oral communication. The adoption of IDEA allowed family participation in the decision-making process. Advances in technology increased student access to sound, resulting in more educational placement options. Despite the positive changes, the complex nature of hearing loss and the wide variety in cultural considerations have made it difficult to determine the best approach to deaf education. Thus, educators and providers are left in a conundrum of which version of “traditional” deaf education is best for students.

Considering the potential of Collaborative International Online Learning (COIL) for cross-boundaries interacting and collaborating effectively, this study aims to explore the intercultural awareness of pre-service language teachers after participating in a COIL project.

Following a quantitative research approach and an exploratory cross-sectional method, the authors administered a 13-item questionnaire to unveil the perceptions of 64 future language teachers from Spain after their online experience with counterparts from the USA.

Participants consider that COIL may have enhanced their intercultural and global awareness and equipped them with valuable skills and knowledge for the future, being women more positive than men. Moreover, the results also suggest that those participants who have not traveled abroad consider COIL to be a good opportunity to compensate for the lack of knowledge or experience with other cultures resulting from not having had the opportunity to visit other countries.

COIL needs to be seen as a powerful tool to promote global learning, intercultural understanding and the development of skills among students that will be vital for success in today’s interconnected world. Nevertheless, universities and teacher training centers need to rethink the preparation of future teachers for the increasing demands to prepare students for the requirements of the global world, and to do so, they need to consider that COIL may offer them significant benefits.

This work offers an interesting exploration of teachers’ attitudes toward COIL, providing insights into the potential of online collaboration for developing intercultural awareness.

Family–school partnerships are an essential component of the special education process for children with disabilities. Notably, recent legislative reauthorizations of IDEA (2004) have focused on increasing parent involvement. For many parents, participation occurs primarily through the individualized education program (IEP) meetings. Parent involvement often includes parent advocating for their children. However, many parents face barriers when advocating to obtain appropriate special education services for their children with disabilities. Culturally and linguistically diverse families face greater systemic barriers (e.g., language and cultural differences) to access services for their own children with disabilities. School professionals can foster opportunities to help families be active members of the IEP process. For example, school professionals should connect families with resources to learn about their special education rights. Specifically, school personnel can encourage families to reach out to their local Parent Training and Information (PTI) Center to be educated and empowered to advocate for services. In addition, parents can be encouraged to attend parent advocacy programs to help increase knowledge, advocacy, and empowerment to access and advocate for services for their own children. Advancing the values of working with parents of students with special education needs is discussed.

Misunderstanding and harmful stereotyping have become commonplace amongst people in the United States and the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region since 2001, if not earlier. If universities are the locus of transformative education, work remains towards remedying these issues.One non-profit organisation, “Natafaham (pseudonym, Arabic for « we understand each other”), works to undo this negativity student by student. It brings participants from the MENA and Europe/North America into dialogue via Zoom each week. The inter-cultural dialogue availed to participants is empowering to actors, including the dialogue facilitator. This narrative is an autoethnographic exploration of my experience as an intercultural dialogue facilitator. Yet reviewing contemporaneous notes and reflections revealed structural aspects of this programme that empower voices from the MENA region, while facilitating learning amongst participants on both sides of the Atlantic. Such aspects include the format and the location of the programme, its focus on individuals rather than institutions or groups, its mixed top-down and bottom-up approach, and the opportunities it avails for ascension to positions of authority. This narrative analyses these aspects through several lenses and academic traditions, including those of global citizenship, critical internationalisation, (reciprocal) global service learning, and socio-cultural frameworks of second language acquisition. The chapter urges that these aspects are recognised as key catalysts of (more) equal relationships between youth in the MENA region and the United States, which merit widespread replication. It concludes by envisioning a still more equal relationship predicated upon more equitable language usage.