This study investigates the intersection of Family Language Policy, childrearing practices, and language shift from Kyrgyz to Russian in a household in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Through participant observation and analysis of quotidian interactions within one middle-class family, the research examines why despite stigmatization of Russian-speaking Kyrgyz children and fears of language shift, most interactions in the household are in Russian. Preference for Russian in the family is shaped by parenting ideologies, or beliefs about what constitutes proper childrearing. In this case, the parents desire a 'gentler' upbringing than they believe they themselves experienced, emphasizing creativity, freedom, and democratic relationships among family members. The parents' parenting philosophies indirectly result in a Family Language Policy in which children's linguistic preferences are nearly always accommodated to, thus contributing to Russian use in the home. Children also actively influence Family Language Policy, as they respond to accommodation in Russian, suggesting a change in how language is used to negotiate kinship and authority within the family. Ultimately the work demonstrates how understanding language shift requires exploring the interconnection among global influences on childrearing practices, local language ideologies, and the active role of children in shaping Family Language Policy.
This study explores the effects of emergent Welsh-English bilingualism on early literacy development in primary school children in Wales, aged 54-90 months. Sixty-three primary school pupils participated, including 38 Welsh-English emergent bilinguals and 25 English monolinguals. There were no differences between language groups for age (months), socioeconomic status, nonverbal intelligence, and English receptive vocabulary. Groups were compared on a battery of English literacy assessments from the MABEL [Multilanguage Assessment Battery of Early Literacy; Caravolas et al. 2019. MABEL: Multilanguage Assessment Battery for Early Literacy], namely Phoneme Awareness (phoneme isolation, deletion and blending) and word- and pseudoword reading skills. Language groups (monolingual and emergent bilingual) were further divided up based on their school year (Reception, Year 1 and Year 2) resulting in six smaller sub-groups. Results revealed superior emergent bilingual performance compared to monolingual peers on Phoneme Isolation, Phoneme Blending, Word- and Pseudoword reading in Reception, and Phoneme Deletion in Year 1, with no group differences in Year 2. This demonstrates that emergent bilingualism has a facilitative effect in the development of early literacy skills in primary school children. Future directions and implications are discussed.
In recent years, bilingual education in Latin America has expanded under the dual pressures of global English dominance and local commitments to linguistic equity. This study explores how teachers in an elite K-12 bilingual (Spanish-English) school in Ecuador conceptualize bilingual education, with particular attention to the ideologies that shape their instructional practices. The study draws on interviews with four teachers, two monolinguals and two bilinguals, and employs a comparative case study design to examine how language ideologies intersect with institutional structures and classroom routines. Findings reveal a strong English-centric ideology in which English is framed as the key to academic success and employability, often at the expense of Spanish and Indigenous languages that are integral to Ecuador's multilingual context. Teachers' own linguistic biographies influenced whether they enforced monolingual norms or embraced heteroglossic pedagogical strategies. The study emphasizes how bilingual education, when driven by unexamined ideologies, can reinforce rather than disrupt linguistic hierarchies. We call for greater reflexivity around language policy and pedagogy to support more equitable models of bilingual schooling.
This study explores how family language practices are linked to Chinese learning trajectories in Chinese-heritage and mixed-heritage family settings in Ireland. Drawing on Spolsky's family language policy framework and Bourdieu's concept of linguistic capital, it looks at how parental beliefs are (or are not) carried into daily routines and learning outcomes. A sequential explanatory mixed-methods design combined a parental questionnaire (N = 37) with follow-up interviews. The data suggest contrasts between Chinese-heritage and mixed-heritage families in how consistent and how intensive home input is. Heritage families more often maintained regular routines, whereas mixed families more often relied on encouragement without stable routines, which was associated with less regular exposure. Reports of explicit, time-bound language rules were associated with a more balanced profile across the survey skill indicators in both groups. Teacher interviews and TR ratings provided an institutional reference point, pointing to perception gaps and possible feedback loops at the home-school interface. Overall, the findings suggest that family language management is the practical step that connects belief to routine practice, shaping how linguistic capital may be taken up as learning opportunities and outcomes. The study also offers practical insights for strengthening home-school coordination in multilingual education.
This preregistered study examined learning conditions associated with becoming competent bilingual in two bilingual samples of primary school children in Germany. Using NEPS data, we analyzed 200 Russian-German and 135 Turkish-German second graders based on their competences in German (the majority language) and Russian or Turkish (the minority languages). Latent profile analyses identified two profiles in the Russian-German sample (Average Balanced Bilinguals, Competent Bilinguals) and one in the Turkish-German sample (Emergent Bilinguals). Logistic regression analysis in the Russian-German sample showed that individual conditions (general cognitive abilities) and family-related learning conditions (cultural resources, language use at home) increased the probability of developing a Competent Bilingual profile. Linear regression analyses revealed a significant effect for institutional learning conditions (share of immigrant students) only for the Turkish-German sample. Thus, individual, family, and informal institutional resources appear to foster competent bilingualism, an increasingly important cultural value in diverse societies.
This article contributes to understanding how and why first language-based multilingual education (L1-based MLE) policy is politically prioritized on national agendas in low- and middle-income multilingual countries. Given growing evidence of the efficacy of L1-based MLE in improving learning outcomes, but its relatively rare adoption or implementation at scale, the issue of the generation of political priority is a central question. This article presents results from Senegal's recent developments in bilingual education (BE) as an illustrative case study of high political prioritization of L1-based MLE. It uses a variant of process tracing (PT) as a qualitative method of causal analysis to identify the factors explaining the generation of high political priority for BE in Senegal. This method, called 'explaining outcome PT,' empirically examines a set of theorized causes derived from political science and policy analysis literature to assemble a minimally sufficient explanation of a historical outcome. Key factors that explain the high political priority for BE in Senegal are the combination of national and local actor power, which has legitimized BE over time and provided proofs of concept to overcome barriers such as perceived intractability and implementation difficulty. Transnational influence is a secondary cause, important for policy implementation.
This study examines how Taiwanese exchange students develop multilingual identities during study abroad (SA) in non-Anglophone countries where English intersects with local languages. While research has often focused on EuroAmerican students or Asian students in Anglophone contexts, less is known about Asian students' linguistic identity development in non-Anglophone settings. Guided by the framework of English as a Multilingua Franca (EMF), the study employed qualitative case studies of two Taiwanese students' SA experiences in Germany and Korea. Data were collected across pre-, during-, and post-sojourn phases through questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and reflection journals. Findings show that while English was indispensable in academic spaces, it was insufficient in everyday life, which required reliance on local languages. Situated in EMF contact zones, the participants developed both lingua franca awareness and critical language awareness: they prioritized mutual understanding over native-speaker norms, adopted flexible communication strategies, and questioned stereotypes. Such awareness also transferred to their local language learning, where communicability was emphasized over accuracy. However, both expressed ambivalence toward their multilingual identities, particularly in high-stakes contexts where they evaluated themselves against native-speaker benchmarks. The findings underscore the need for multilingual and translingual pedagogies in higher education to prepare students for negotiating identities in globalized contexts.
Situated in Chinese-and-English-medium higher education, this intrinsic case study rethinks prevailing standards for successful Language Socialization (LS) by examining misrecognized success. In such cases, learners' visible competence and smooth participation are taken as evidence of successful integration, even as they remain internally distant and superficially engaged. To capture this process in institutional contexts, the study follows a bilingual Canadian undergraduate during a six-month exchange at a university in China and uses thematically analyzed qualitative data to trace socialization across academic and peer interactional contexts. Findings show that, despite fluent Chinese and confident public performance, the participant's engagement with the local community often remained limited. He avoided clarification, relied on contextual inference, and used digital tools to manage interactional demands. These practices were not rooted in linguistic deficiency but shaped by social-cognitive mechanisms aimed at preserving self-image and minimizing discomfort. To illustrate this pattern, the study introduces the transparent shell metaphor to show how visible participation can coexist with constrained internal socialization. The study problematizes behaviorally oriented LS standards that equate fluency with adaptation and highlights pedagogical needs for emotional safety, reflective dialogue, and low-risk opportunities for clarification in bilingual and international classrooms.
Research has examined bilingual teachers' work and their experiences through the theoretical lens of teacher advocacy, teacher agency, and teacher leadership. This research synthesis analyzes the current research on the three frameworks in bilingual education and examines how they intersect. Bilingual teachers advocated for educational change to address the needs of emergent bilinguals. Despite various context-specific constraints, bilingual teachers agentively created bilingual spaces for linguistically diverse students. Furthermore, bilingual teachers actively took up leadership roles, demonstrated increased consciousness, and developed leadership identities. Through this exploration, this paper proposes a model that integrates the three frameworks for bilingual teacher education and professional development.
This article introduces 'Multiepistemicism', theorising it as the condition and process whereby multiple epistemologies, which are simultaneously negotiated, entangled, contested, silenced, fragmented, disrupted, affirmed, and rearticulated, coexist and dynamically interweave, shaping conceptualisation, analysis, interpretation, and expression across different levels of social organization, from individual cognition to institutional structures, and across heterogeneous modalities such as linguistic, cultural, artistic, and performative practices. To exemplify this framework, the article investigates individuals' epistemic labour within their multilingual habits, showing how using different languages and the dynamics between them (e.g. power struggle, local/foreign, instrumentality) shape the ongoing and multidirectional influence among language, epistemology, knowledge, and reality. This study draws on in-depth interviews with university students from several Moroccan universities where Arabic, French, and English serve as mediums of instruction. Findings reveal that (a) multilingualism actively contributes to multiepistemicism (in terms of epistemic plurality) at the level of knowledge reception and consumption, but not knowledge production (reasoning and generation of ideas), (b) the language used to learn and express certain knowledge does not entail any form of classification or ranking of that knowledge by the students, and (c) the power struggle among languages is not reflected in how students evaluate various perspectives and ideas they encounter.
While the world is beginning to recognize that rigid monolingual education formats (e.g. English medium instruction) limit student engagement, it is becoming increasingly clear that the development of flexible bi/multilingual practices is crucial for optimal science education. A fundamental goal of bilingual science education is to promote bilingual scientific literacy (BSL). Although bilingual scientific argumentation (BSA) is an essential aspect of BSL, there is little published evidence on how to support BSA. This intervention study aimed to provide empirical evidence for the theoretical claim that recorded oral feedback (ROF) can be used as a type of formative assessment to support BSA. Using a quasi-experimental single-case research design, we analyzed the BSA produced by thirty-seven undergraduates (13 females and 24 males, 16-27 years old) during a bilingual science course taught within a ROF-based formative assessment environment. The findings indicate that ROF helped the participants' creation of arguments, anticipation of counterarguments, and construction of rebuttals in Spanish, in English and in a hybrid fashion (Spanish-English code-switching). The results provide valuable evidence for bilingual science educators to consider the use of ROF as a genuine formative assessment practice to support BSA. Implications related to supporting students' development of BSA skills are discussed.
Recognizing the importance of emergent bilinguals' linguistic resources in English-medium settings, TESOL teacher preparation programs are increasingly centering translanguaging theory to guide pedagogical practices. This mixed-method study examines changes in 77 prekindergarten to 12th grade teachers' translanguaging beliefs and practices after participating in a translanguaging-focused graduate course. We use a dependent-sample analysis of variance to investigate changes in survey responses regarding translanguaging beliefs and practices; multiple linear regression to examine teachers' backgrounds as predictors of beliefs and practices; and thematic analysis of pretest and posttest open-ended responses addressing translanguaging conceptualizations, benefits, and challenges. Quantitative findings revealed statistically significant increases in teachers' adoption of translanguaging beliefs, confidence in leveraging emergent bilinguals' home languages for instruction, and self-reported translanguaging-aligned practices. Qualitative data reinforced these shifts, with teachers conceptualizing language as a dynamic repertoire and identifying translanguaging as essential for equity, content access, language development, and assessment. Notably, elementary teachers reported more frequent implementation of translanguaging practices than secondary teachers, suggesting the need for differentiated support across grade levels. This study thus reveals the promise of translanguaging-focused teacher preparation in shifting beliefs and practices toward a translanguaging-as-resource orientation.
