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This article reports on findings from the first year of a professional learning partnership aimed at supporting elementary teachers in improving their writing instruction for emergent bilingual students. Specifically, we present a case study of one fourth grade teacher's writing instruction, exploring how an introduction to a functional approach to teaching argument writing contributed to shifts in practice and in her understanding of effective writing instruction for emergent bilingual students. The research team engaged in two cycles of data collection across 5 months, conducted before and after an introductory seven-hour professional development workshop on systemic functional linguistics (SFL) genre pedagogy, in order to document changes in how the focal teacher was enacting and conceptualizing writing instruction for emergent bilinguals. Findings revealed three central shifts in the teacher's writing instruction: (1) from surface-level genre engagement to exploring functional relationships between genre stages, (2) from assessment-oriented writing instruction to learning activities grounded in authentic purpose and audience, and (3) from general language supports to targeted, contextualized writing scaffolds. This study builds upon existing scholarship by illustrating the potential of (even limited exposure to) SFL genre pedagogy to shift teachers' writing instruction toward social semiotic perspectives of language and literacy. We also extend existing research by interrogating the institutional and ideological challenges teachers encounter when taking up SFL genre pedagogy and by offering some initial insights into the potential for engaging in SFL genre pedagogy in bilingual learning spaces.

Show-and-Tell activity provides emergent bilingual (EB) children with an opportunity to engage oral language skills to support their developing bi/literacy. In dual language bilingual education (DLBE) preschool programs, teachers utilize translanguaging practices to facilitate communication, scaffold learning, and encourage participation. Using a sustainable translanguaging lens, we explore English- and Spanish-language model teachers' pedagogical choices in Show-and-Tell in support of children's Show-and-Tell purposes and practices. Video data were analyzed for discourse- and content-related codes to examine teachers' discursive and translanguaging choices and presenters' languaging practices during Show-and-Tell. Qualitative analyses revealed that teachers' translanguaging choices vary in response to the language context (i.e. teacher's designated language of instruction and the target language of the Show-and-Tell) and to children's languaging practices (i.e. choice of language, amount of unprompted talk, purpose of presentation, degree of peer involvement). Given the vulnerable status of Spanish as the minoritized language in an English-majority culture, teachers sustained the use and modeling of Spanish in Spanish Show-and-Tell while integrating Spanish as a supportive resource in English Show-and-Tell. Findings suggest implications for how teachers can protect minoritized languages within DLBE preschool programs while valuing children's authentic translanguaging practices and building on children's understanding language functions and forms in each language.

This exploratory multiple case study investigated how preschool-age, Spanish-English emergent bilingual (EB) children with diverse language profiles leverage their discursive resources to engage with peers and teachers in sociodramatic play (SDP) interactions. Data were collected over the course of one academic year, including weekly video recordings of child-peer and child-teacher interactions in SDP activity. A dynamic conceptualization of bilingualism and a community of practice perspective guided our cross-case analysis of three EBs, leading to the identification of three themes characterizing children's oral discourse functions -- narrating action/events, requesting/inviting, and asserting position -- and varying languaging patterns in SDP. Sample excerpts illustrate the ways in which children assembled and orchestrated fluid and agentive translingual practices to extend, elicit, and justify play ideas, as well as to bridge communication with peers.

Integrated Reading-Writing Instruction (IRWI) is an approach for English Language Arts (ELA) instruction that has gained much attention since the adoption of college and career standards. Previous studies have shown that connecting reading and writing during instruction positively affects students' literacy outcomes as related cognitive processes are engaged in the construction of meaning. This qualitative study of five 4th grade elementary ELA classrooms serving diverse students, including emergent bilinguals, explored the transition from the previous form of writing instruction to IRWI, or analytical text-based writing in elementary classrooms when implementing college and career standards. The findings indicated that IRWI introduced several affordances for the five teachers' instruction, such as an explicit connection between reading and writing, and for their emergent bilingual students, overall improvement of reading comprehension and preparation for more college-like writing. Also, participating teachers reported several disadvantages for their emergent bilingual students stemming from how IRWI was implemented in the district. These disadvantages included the absence of creativity and genre variety for writing instruction, writing that was dependent upon English reading comprehension, and difficulties with teaching how to write evidence and elaboration.

This article illustrates how two fourth-grade bilingual teachers transformed their writing instruction for bi/multilingual learners by integrating a functional approach to language and literacy teaching and learning. The authors use a systemic functional linguistics genre pedagogy to explore and elucidate the teachers' innovative instructional practices, revealing how the teachers supported bi/multilingual students in: (1) preparing to write about a topic; (2) engaging with texts to understand the purpose, organizational structure, and linguistic features of a genre; and (3) making language choices to develop a topic. Through clear and explicit instruction that centers language and meaning, these pedagogical innovations support bi/multilingual students' systematic engagement with and production of multiple text types for authentic and varied audiences across a range of communicative purposes and contexts.

This case study explores how an emergent bilingual preschooler used transmodal practices to engage with objects and compose narratives in sociodramatic play. Video recordings and field notes were collected in a dual language preschool classroom in the United States to examine the actional, verbal, and visual modes used by the focal child during his engagement with objects. An action-oriented analysis using multimodal discourse and mediated action frameworks revealed how he transmodally engaged with play artifacts to embody imagined roles and extend objects' functionality. The child engaged with objects in three particular ways by (a) resourcing objects to advertise play to peers, (b) extending objects' meaning potential, and (c) recruiting physical and imagined objects to elaborate on storyline. His translanguaging served as an additional compositional resource to provide contextualization for play narratives; showcase personalized meanings and underscore his multimodal intent during play; and endorse and co-opt others' play ideas. Findings have implications for ways that early childhood teachers can use objects to promote and augment multimodal sociodramatic play scenarios.

On a February afternoon, Kayla gathers her second graders on the class carpet and displays images of a phonograph, a conventional record player, and a DJ turntable. Students talk excitedly [...]

Trauma pedagogy occupies an intriguing space within the discourse about effective teaching of culturally and linguistically diverse students, particularly in relation to preservice teacher notions of power. One set of messages received by future teachers strongly advocates for asserting authority within the classroom by taking control via strict routines. However, to prepare culturally and linguistically responsive teachers, research showed trauma pedagogy as a tool for disrupting preservice teachers' preconceptions about ELLs and unsettled their perceptions about teaching in diverse settings. This article's intent is to provide reasons for hope, endorse regard for difference, and embrace individual identity (especially ethnicity and language) as salient to the prospects of becoming a successful teacher. To this end, the authors investigated how participation in a mediated language immersion experience influenced preservice teachers' views about culturally and linguistically diverse students.

In 2002, Massachusetts voters passed Question 2, a law similar to its predecessors in California (Proposition 227) and Arizona (Proposition 203) to replace bilingual education with structured English immersion (SEI) programs. Using Ruiz's (1984) framework for language planning as an analytical lens, this study examined how three Massachusetts districts resisted the monolingual ideology that characterizes laws mandating the implementation of English-only programs and addresses how local policies and practices conceptualized the mandated SEI program differently according to the specific implementation context. Since each district had been ideologically opposed to English-only approaches prior to Question 2, the language as right and language as resource orientations continued to influence the interpretation of SEI. As a result, SEI was positioned differently ideologically in relation to the law (the value of bilingualism versus English-only education) as well as structurally within each district (as part of a bilingual program sequence, as part of a world language program, self-contained). As a language policy, "SEI" therefore does not have a fixed meaning but will necessarily be socially constructed within each context by the beliefs, experiences, and histories of the individuals involved. (Contains 6 endnotes.)

In this case study, situated in a preschool classroom within an early childhood Spanish/English dual language programme, we examine how an emergent bilingual child engages with multimodal resources to participate in sociodramatic play discourses. Guided by sociocultural and critical discourse perspectives on multimodality, we analysed ways in which Anthony, a four-year-old emergent bilingual child, engaged in meaning-making during play through verbal, visual and actional modes and in conjunction with additional subcategories in his transmodal repertoire (e.g. translanguaging, sentence types, actual versus signified use of artefacts). Our results revealed differences in the ways Anthony engaged his verbal modes (e.g. monolingual languaging versus translanguaging; varying sentence types) together with actional and visual modes to accomplish adult-centric tasks versus creatively engaging in child-centric play. His translanguaging furthered his communication in tandem with the affordances of his visual and actional resources, depending on his play purposes and collaborators. Anthony's case illustrates how emergent bilingual children access a variety of modes to participate in literate discourses in complex and varied ways. This article concludes with a discussion on the importance of thoroughly accounting for the contexts and multimodal supports in interactive learning spaces.

In this essay, some of the 2015-2017 STAR mentors (mentors of authors in this special issue) illustrate the importance for policymakers, professional organizations, school administrators, and state and system administrators to foster bidirectional relationships with early career scholars of Color. This Insight Column provides the field of language and literacy education, administrators, and state and federal policymakers with recommendations and implications on how to better prepare, serve, retain, and humanize early career scholars of Color.

This study investigated third graders' use and variation of linguistic resources when writing a science explanation. Using systemic functional linguistics as a framework, we purposefully selected and analyzed writing samples of students with high and low scores to explore how the students' use of language features (i.e., lexicogrammatical resources) reflected those expected in the discipline, or register, of science, as well as alternative language patterns used to realize the cyclical explanation genre in science. The language features used in high-scored samples were more aligned with those of the discipline compared with the low-scored samples. Although the low-scored samples revealed that students possessed some valid scientific understandings, these understandings were not as evident due to the students' limited use of language features commonly found in the science register. This work fills important gaps in the literature concerning the contribution of lexicogrammatical resources in conveying elementary students' science knowledge through written explanations.

This study examined how a pair of Spanish/English dual language bilingual education (DLBE) preschool teachers enacted their bilingualism while working cohesively and simultaneously toward common instructional goals. We drew on classroom video data, field notes, and other relevant artifacts collected weekly during shared readings of English- and Spanish-language storybooks over the course of one academic year to document coteachers' book-based interactions with each other and their students. Guided by translanguaging (O. García, 2009a, 2009b; O. García & Wei, 2014) and distributive cognition (Brown & Campione, 1996; Hutchins, 1995) frameworks, findings elucidate how teachers drew on their own and each other's dynamic bilingualism through both monolingual and bilingual performances, supporting the coordination of instructional targets (e.g., vocabulary, narrative genre) and instructional practices (e.g., translation, explanation). Findings have implications for DLBE program language policy and practice as they highlight the utility of a bilingual pedagogy.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest among policymakers, practitioners, and researchers in early bilingual development and the unique role of the educational setting's language policy in this development. In this article, we describe how one dual language preschool teacher, in partnership with two co-teachers, navigated the tensions between language separation ideology and its practical realization in early bilingual education by co-constructing and enacting flexible bilingual pedagogic practices in support of Spanish-English emergent bilingual children's participation in language and literary activities and performance of academic discourse. Teachers' translanguaging practices of code-switching, translation, bilingual recasting, and language brokering drew on children's linguistic and cultural funds of knowledge, supported experimentation with new language forms, and integrated various languages and language varieties, while recognizing, validating, and expressing their shared bilingual identities.

In this paper, we present an analysis of the language practices of four Spanish/English dual language (DL) preschool teachers, focusing on the ways in which the teachers mediate bilingual interactions with students and distribute Spanish and English across different classroom discourse functions. Findings reveal teachers' flexible and strategic use of each language to support children's developing bilingual competencies as well as to negotiate several communicative, academic, and management functions. Findings further illuminate the utility of bilingual speech/interaction as a communicative and academic resource and suggest that a strict language separation approach, as traditionally implemented in DL programs, may be at odds with the natural social interactions of bilinguals who draw on a number of communicative strategies, including codeswitching and tandem talk, to construct meaning. (Contains 1 table and 11 notes.)

This qualitative study examined code-switching patterns in the writing-related talk of 6 emergent Spanish-English bilingual first-grade children. Audio recordings, field notes, and writing artifacts documenting participant activities and language use in Spanish and English writing workshops were gathered over the course of 6 months and analyzed for code-switching prevalence, form, content, and purpose in relation to the writing process. The percentage distribution of oral code switching across the two linguistic contexts suggests a sociolinguistic imbalance between the two languages, wherein English played a prevalent role in the creation of Spanish texts, but Spanish did not appear to have the same utility in the development of English texts. Four general categories of code-switching functions emerged, indicating emergent bilingual writers' (a) evaluation and self-regulation skills, (b) sociolinguistic and sociocultural competence, (c) metalinguistic insights, and (d) use of code switching to indicate a shift in topic, person, or syntactic form. These findings intimate children's capacity to exploit their developing bilingual linguistic repertoire for a variety of academic and social purposes and illuminate the potential of code switching as a cognitive and linguistic resource in the process of writing. (Contains 3 figures, 3 tables, and 8 notes.)

This exploratory study investigated the nature and distribution of dual-language preschool teachers' questions across parallel Spanish- and English-medium read-aloud activities. The notions of comprehensible input (Krashen, 1985) and language output (Swain, 1985), along with a reciprocal interaction model of teaching (Cummins, 2000), guided our understanding of teachers' use of questions to engage students in book-based extended dialogue in each target language. We utilized digital video recordings and field notes to capture the naturally occurring teacher-child interactions of read-aloud activities in two dual-language preschool classrooms over a period of two months. Findings revealed that teachers asked a variety of questions, exhibiting a multitude of functions and levels of cognitive challenge; however, question types were not equitably distributed across the two instructional languages as teachers asked significantly more "inference-based" and "factual" questions during Spanish-medium read alouds and more "experience-based" and "word-focused" questions in English-medium read alouds. Implications for practice are discussed. (Contains 2 tables.)

In response to growing concerns among faculty regarding the lack of attention to the bilingual student population in our pre-service teacher education program, the authors engaged in a shared self-study of the process of revising and implementing a secondary English methods course with explicit attention to the special needs of bilingual/bicultural learners. The paper describes how the second author, an English educator, with support from the first author, a mentor/colleague in bilingual education, identified and negotiated tensions and dilemmas that arose in a process of curricular transformation toward culturally and linguistically responsive teacher education practice. The study highlights several points of disjuncture, or critical turning points, experienced by the English educator and the ways in which she navigated the contradictions that resulted at these points of disjuncture through conversation with her mentor. Our documentation and articulation of this process may assist content area teacher educators in negotiating new knowledge and creating strategies for managing the dilemmas in practice that arise in the design and implementation of revised course curricula aimed at supporting culturally and linguistically diverse learners. (Contains 7 notes.)

In the current english-only programs in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts only a small percentage of students are learning English and subject matter content. This violates the success in practice prong of "Castaneda v. Pickard" (1981). Further, these program failures bolster the claim that these programs also violate castaneda's sound theory and qualified expert support prong. Previous legal actions focused on the latter requirement and failed. Focusing on program failure creates a greater likelihood of successful legal challenge. This article calls for a change in interpretation of ELL rights and program requirements based on the majority consensus of best practices research. (Contains 1 table and 4 footnotes.)

This study analyzes the nature of spontaneous bilingual peer interactions across Spanish/English integrated learning contexts, as well as the roles played by Spanish-dominant and English-dominant peers in mediating each others' bilingual, biliteracy, and cross-cultural learning in a two-way partial immersion (TWpI) program. Implications for designing and implementing effective language, literacy, and cross-cultural learning environments for bilingual children from minority- and majority-language backgrounds are addressed. (Contains 2 footnotes and 1 table.)

This qualitative study investigated the writing processes of eight emergent bilingual children as they composed stories in two languages in a Writing Workshop (WW) context. The research was situated in two grade 1 classrooms in a Spanish/English Two-Way Bilingual Education program in the north-eastern USA. For six months, researchers observed students in Spanish and English WWs, interviewed students about their writing behaviors and understandings, and collected samples from all stages of the writing process. Cross-case analyses of individual bilingual writing profiles revealed similarities and differences in students' cross-linguistic skills, as well as patterns of transfer. Patterns of bilingual writing related to strategic codeswitching, positive literacy transfer, and interliteracy led to the development of a preliminary model of bilingual writing development for English-dominant and Spanish-dominant bilingual learners.This model presents phenomena unique to bilingual writers, relates these to bilingualism and biliteracy, and proposes anticipated expression of the phenomena for developing Spanish-dominant and English-dominant bilingual writers. (Contains 6 tables and 1 note.)

This article describes three medium-sized districts' responses to the successful passage of an English-only ballot initiative in Massachusetts. Through interviews with bilingual directors and document analysis the study found that programmatic changes as a result of the new law were primarily limited to elementary-level transitional bilingual education programs. Key leaders' detailed knowledge of the law and commitment to bilingual education, and the local context, influenced how the state-mandated policy was translated into practice.

An introduction is presented in which the editors discusses the contents within the issue including recommendations on how teachers and families can work together to develop biliteracy, the complexity of various biliteracy practices and the implication of biliteracy development in first graders.