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This chapter discusses the findings of a qualitative study conducted on the US–Mexico border to investigate preservice bilingual teachers’ understandings of the effective practices needed to teach content in bilingual classrooms. Specifically, participants’ understandings of teaching language through content to emergent bilinguals and the role of academic language in a content methods course taught in Spanish for preservice bilingual teachers were explored. The results of the study show that preservice bilingual teachers struggled to internalize how to develop language objectives that embed the four language domains as well as the three levels of academic language into their content lessons. Although participants emphasized vocabulary development, they integrated multiple scaffolding strategies to support emergent bilinguals. Moreover, although preservice bilingual teachers struggled with standard Spanish, they used translanguaging to navigate the discourse of education in their content lessons. The use of academic Spanish was also evident in participants’ planning of instruction. The authors contend that bilingual teacher preparation would benefit from the implementation of a dynamic bilingual curriculum that: (a) incorporates sustained opportunities across coursework for preservice bilingual teachers to strengthen their understanding of content teaching and academic language development for emergent bilinguals; (b) values preservice bilingual teachers’ language varieties, develops metalinguistic awareness, and fosters the ability to navigate between language registers for teaching and learning; and (c) values translanguaging as a pedagogical strategy that provides access to content and language development.

When bilingual teachers are first hired, many say they are pressured to teach material only in English (Menken, 2008). Removing instruction in a child’s native language is not likely to improve scores on English standardized tests (Rolstad, Mahoney, & Glass, 2005), and long term, English-Only instruction reduces academic success and reduces graduation rates (Iddings, Combs, & Moll, 2012). This chapter looks at bilingual classrooms in a Texas school district, through classroom observations, interviews, and a large-scale survey seeking to answer the question, what do officially bilingual classrooms look like when they operate monolingually? Results showed that administrators exerted pressure, and teachers used methods they expected not to work. Some bilingual classrooms had teachers who either could not speak Spanish, or chose not to. Because classrooms operated without the legally required amount of first-language instruction, the district’s “bilingual” programs undermined accountability data while harming emergent bilinguals. Teacher educators have not prepared bilingual teachers for the reality of anti-bilingual schools. New teachers need to know how to not only implement research-based instruction but also defend their instructional choices. Wherever lawmakers, agencies, and administrators have allowed transitional bilingual programs to become de facto monolingual, there may be a role for colleges of education to play, monitoring, assisting, and, if necessary, publicizing lack of compliance. Study findings are limited to one specific district; even in districts with similar phenomena, the manner in which a bilingual program ceases to be bilingual will vary substantially.

A pressing educational concern is how to provide effective education for the growing population of dual language learners (DLL) in early childhood settings. Given the robust findings that family involvement promotes children’s academic success as well as recognition of parents’ “funds of knowledge,” one pathway to provide a culturally and linguistically responsive classroom environment for DLLs is to form collaborative relationships between parents and teachers of DLLs. The purpose of this chapter is to describe Project TAPP (Teachers and Parents as Partners), a community of practice (CoP) composed of parents and teachers of preschool dual language learners. The chapter describes the framework of Project TAPP, findings related to participation, and lessons learned.

“Dora! Dora!” squealed my 18-month-old son from his stroller on the crowded subway platform. I scanned the crowd but could not locate the source of his excitement. Then a young girl turned her back to us and I saw on her purple backpack the face of “Dora the Explorer,” whose name had made its way into my son's small vocabulary. This scene could have easily taken place in any city or town in the US; young children of all ethnicities are familiar with Dora's animated television program. Worldwide, parents have spent over $3 billion on Dora the Explorer merchandise since 2001, and most products feature English and Spanish phrases (Jiménez, 2005). And Dora is not alone: her show was just the first in a recent wave of animated educational children's programs featuring Latino main characters and dialogue in Spanish.

This chapter discusses of the role of Spanish as the language of instruction in a multilingual classroom with Erasmus students at the Faculty of Teacher Training of the University of Valencia (Spain). The author also examines the role that first languages play in multilingual classroom integration as they have little place in the school system.

The author also discusses the use of digital technology as a means of expression and defense of the linguistic rights of minority languages. In that respect, collective linguistic production and the use of different languages relates to the aim of preserving mother tongues in their original contexts.

The current study focuses on a key element: artistic productions using new technology are characterized as having great communicative value, and an important potential for social change, which can improve the linguistic attitude of minority language speakers toward their mother tongue and reinforce their awareness of participating in a process of collectively and interactively creating the final product. This is a highly important collaborative tool meant to help preserve and maintain one’s language and identity.

The chapter concludes that education through multilingual language learning and mobility remains an important means of supporting and sustaining the first languages of Erasmus students, the successful acquisition of Spanish as the official language of the host country, and the use of English as an additional language in order to help students gradually master curriculum content, while improving their linguistic skills and language proficiency.

Language use is a highly controversial issue in the United States (Schmidt, 2000). Among all the linguistic access issues (e.g., bilingual education, multilingual ballots), however, the issue of access to justice is probably the least contentious. Most people in the United States seem to agree and appreciate the fact that access to justice premises on the ability of court users to understand the process in which they participate. The integrity of the legal process, particularly for the common law system (like the American legal system), which features an adversarial trial process, would be compromised if litigants were unable to communicate with or understand the judge, witnesses, or opposing parties or counsel. The guiding theory behind the common law is that adversarial trials set up two or more parties to be in conflict with one another in a zero-sum game; it is therefore important for all participating parties to be on equal footing (Thibaut & Walker, 1975).

This chapter builds on theories of culturally responsive teaching and translanguaging pedagogies to explore teaching strategies that linguistically, culturally, and educationally empower Muslim immigrant emergent bilinguals in the classroom. These students are often speakers of less commonly used languages, not shared with other adults in the school, thus teachers and school leaders often do not know how to use home languages as teaching tools. This study sought to find practical solutions by going straight to the source – the students themselves. Through a one-year qualitative arts-based study, 15 recently arrived Muslim immigrants provided information about their language use and meaning-making of school experiences. Using interview, observation, and student-created artifacts, data were collected during after-school sessions that also included intensive group discussion and peer interviews in home languages. It was found that these students are facilitating and regulating their own bilingual and multilingual educations through cultural communities of practice. However, it was also found that these students perceived messages from the larger school community as discriminatory, thereby negatively impacting feelings of belonging and value in a school setting. One classroom where students and their languages were valued is profiled in this chapter offering practical ways teachers can engage learning through all languages, especially minority languages, regardless of a teacher’s own linguistic abilities. This chapter offers transferable ideas that may be adapted to diverse classrooms with similar student populations and needs. It is understood that classroom contexts differ based on resources, students’ home language literacy, and curricular demands.

This study, carried out in the bilingual and bicultural border area of South Texas, is an exploration of bilingual preservice teachers’ identity formation and their experiences and beliefs about literacy and biliteracy during an undergraduate class focused on learning about emergent literacy in the bilingual classroom. This study is based on a sociocultural approach to learning and identity development, and research that explores how bilingual teachers’ identity is shaped through their participation in cultural and linguistic practices. The purpose of this practitioner research is to provide insights into preservice teachers’ identities as they start to explore literacy and biliteracy practices. Two research questions guide the study: What experiences about literacy and biliteracy development do prospective teachers identify as meaningful? How do these experiences contribute to define bilingual preservice teachers’ identities? Findings indicate that bilingual preservice teachers’ identities are shaped by cultural and linguistic experiences that define the bilingual and bicultural dynamics of the region. Two predominant types of experiences impact bilingual preservice teachers’ beliefs about teaching, learning, and literacy/biliteracy development. Particularly significant in defining their perceptions are the lessons learned from meaningful others – especially mothers and teachers – and certain relevant memories regarding effective practices they experienced when learning to read and write. Implications for teacher education preparation of bilingual teachers are identified.

Purpose – The main aim of this chapter is to analyze Spanish internal and external territorial conflicts, mostly associated with the border effect between two continents with different economic and cultural systems. We assess the impact that the emergence of the new economy, represented by new technologies, R&D, privatizations, and foreign direct investment, has had in South-Spain, particularly in Andalusia, throughout the period 1995–2010. Special attention has been paid to the dynamics of convergence–divergence processes in terms of per capita income with respect to its neighboring different economic and cultural areas: Europe and the Maghreb.

Methodology – For the aforementioned purposes, we suggest applying the game theory approach to solve domestic secessionist conflicts, and the method followed by Mankiw, Romer, and Weil (1992) to address economic conflicts by means of promoting convergence with Europe. We propose economic competition between cities as a way to deal with external territorial conflicts concerning neighboring countries.

Findings – The main results obtained from econometric applications indicate that privatization processes, foreign direct investment, research and investment, and investment in new technologies allow for the real convergence of Spain and Southern Spain with European economies.

Research limitations – This chapter does not address smaller conflicts.

Social implications – Conflicts resolutions promote peace in both continental borders.

Originality – This chapter analyzes the most relevant domestic and external Spanish conflicts. The most important domestic conflicts are the linguistic and cultural conflicts in bilingual regions. The major external Spanish conflicts analyzed herein are both territorial conflicts between Spain and Morocco and Muslim immigration.

Although studies have shown that electronic media exposure can negatively affect infants’ and young children’s language development, exposure to these forms of media is increasing in North America. To better understand the types of electronic media exposure and their potential effects, we utilized naturalistic daylong recordings collected in the homes of bilingual Spanish–English infants of Latinx descent (n = 37). The present study examines contextual aspects of electronic media exposure, and the effects of electronic media on two types of parent–infant social interactions associated with child language development: parentese (a style of infant-directed speech distinguished by its higher pitch, slower tempo, and exaggerated intonation) and parent–infant turn-taking. Using Language ENvironment Analysis (LENA), two daylong audio recordings were collected from each family. These recordings were manually annotated for electronic media type, directedness, language, parental support, parentese, and turn-taking. Our results showed that the infants in our study experienced exposure to many different forms of electronic media, in both English and Spanish, and that the programming was predominantly adult-directed rather than child-directed. While both parentese and turn-taking were reduced in the presence of electronic media, the strength of these effects was modulated by electronic media sources, demonstrating that various devices differentially affect parental language input. These results provide a glimpse into what types of media young bilingual Spanish–English learning infants are experiencing and can help researchers design language interventions that are inclusive and relevant for families from these populations.