Bilingual and ESL Classrooms Teaching in Multicultural Contexts

Demographic predictions are that students with close connections to their bilingual/bicultural heritages (now labeled “language minority students” by the federal government) will be very large in number in the near future, becoming the majority in many states over the next three decades. The authors feel it is the responsibility of all educators, not just specialists, to prepare themselves to work with language minority students. This time-tested classic text (not an edited volume) integrates theory and practice and provides comprehensive coverage of bilingual and ESL issues. The text integrates the fields of ESL, bilingual, and multicultural education and provides rich examples of effective practices and their underlying research knowledge base. New to this edition are chapters on authentic assessment and special needs.

Dr. Carlos J. Ovando is the Assistant Dean for Teacher Preparation and the Director of Curriculum and Instruction at Arizona State University. His research and writing focuses on factors which contribute to the academic achievement of language minority students and ethnically diverse groups. He has served as guest editor of two special issues of the Educational Research Quarterly. Dr. Ovando has presented invited papers in Canada, Egypt, England, Guam, Mexico, Nicaragua, The Netherlands, The Philippines, Spain, and the United States. He has served as a high school Spanish teacher and as a professor of education at Oregon State University, the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and the University of Southern California. Born in Nicaragua, Dr. Ovando emigrated to the United States at the age of 15 and has experienced first hand many of the academic, sociocultural, and emotional issues which confront language minority students in the United States.