This book is for teachers, teacher educators, school and district administrators, policy makers, and researchers who want to know about literacy, cultural diversity, and students who speak little or no English. It offers a rich picture of the incredible diversity of students who enter secondary school as immigrants—their abilities, their needs, and their aspirations.
The studies reported are part of a large longitudinal study of about 25,000 immigrant students in a district in which the policy is English-only instruction. These studies:
*provide multiple views of the students’ lives and their success in schools where the language of instruction differs from the languages they speak with their friends and families;
*explore the students’ views of teaching and learning;
*describe the potential differences between the students views and those of their teachers;
*look at issues related to students’ views of their identities as they work, study, and socialize in a new environment; and
*examine different reading models designed to facilitate the learning of English as a second language (ESL).
Educators and researchers will find the descriptions of students’ simultaneous learning of English and of academic content relevant to their view of whether instruction should be English only or bilingual. For teachers who view multicultural education as an important endeavor, this book may on occasion surprise them and at other times confirm their views. The author does not attempt to develop a particular political viewpoint about which approach works best with immigrant students. Rather, the objective of the studies was to develop a full, rich description of the lives of immigrant high school students enrolled in classes where the medium of instruction is English. The reader is left to evaluate the results.
By:
Lee Gunderson
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 17mm
Weight: 590g
ISBN: 9780805825145
ISBN 10: 0805825142
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 16 August 2006
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents: Preface: Hopes and Aspirations. Part I:Background and Design. Increasing Diversity and English and Academic Achievement. Reading, Language, and Immigrant Achievement. The Setting, the Population, and the Measures. Part II: Findings of the Studies. Demographic and Descriptive Findings. Reading Models and Traditional Analyses. Multiple Case Studies, Students' Views, and Secondary Achievement. One Immigrant-One Story. Part III: Conclusions and Implications. Summary, Conclusions, Speculations, Observations, and Conundrums.
Reviews for English-Only Instruction and Immigrant Students in Secondary Schools: A Critical Examination
Gunderson's book makes an important contribution to the literature on the academic achievement of immigrant students. It represents essential reading for researchers and policy-makers concerned with school improvement in contexts of increasing cultural and linguistic diversity...Gunderson succeeds admirably in revealing the human face behind the sometimes dense and complex quantitative data. --Jim Cummins, The University of Toronto
