EDST 139: Bilingual Learners: Literacy Development and Instruction

As the number of children who speak, or are exposed to, more than one language increases in U.S. classrooms and in classrooms around the world, educators at all system levels and across varied settings must be prepared to provide high-quality, rigorous education to ever more linguistically diverse groups of students. Designed for researchers and practitioners, this course focuses on the pressing issues related to bilingual students' language and literacy instruction. The term "bilingual" in this course will be used to refer to a variety of students who have diverse and unequal experiences in more than one language and who speak or hear a language different from the societal language at home, but who might receive bilingual or monolingual instruction at school. The course employs an interdisciplinary perspective, drawing on sociocultural, psycho-linguistic, and educational frameworks of research conducted in the United States and in various international contexts. A number of societal factors related to language, literacy, and academic achievement will be explored: the many modes of being bilingual or multilingual, the role of linguistic minorities in society, the role of educational resources, and the impact of educational policies on bilingual populations. The course will provide opportunities to discuss and investigate the literacy development of bilingual learners, reflect on the important contribution of literacy skills to academic achievement, and learn and reflect about research-based instructional approaches.

This course is intended for students who anticipate working with linguistically diverse populations as practitioners, policymakers, or researchers.