Young Dual Language Learners: A Guide for PreK-3 Leaders

Young Dual Language Learners provides clear and concise expert responses to questions that early childhood and elementary education administrators and preschool directors are asking about educating young children who come from homes where languages other than English are spoken. This practitioner friendly guide helps all constituents navigate the landscape of early childhood education in linguistically and culturally responsive ways. It addresses such topics as the role of a child’s home language in the educational process, proper identification of young dual language learners (DLLs); standards and regulations, customizing instructional programs, interviewing and staffing, leadership and professional development, collaborating effectively with families and communities, and many more.

Special Features

• Key Considerations for Language Plan introduces every chapter.
• Over 70 practitioner questions and expert responses offer research-based, pedagogically sound recommendations and strategies educating young DLLs in early childhood programs.
• Questions for Reflection help readers connect expert answers to their own practices.
• Applications templates help administrators and leadership teams apply key concepts to their local preK–3 educational contexts.

The book is structured to encourage productive conversations among book study groups and guide action among leadership teams. Educators can use the Key Considerations for Language Plan that opens each chapter to review what is already happening in their school relative to the chapter topic and to identify areas that they want to target for improvement. Educators can turn to expert responses in the chapters to answer their questions and guide their work. Leadership teams can use the application templates at the end of each chapter to customize their approach to providing quality early childhood programs that place young DLLs on an equitable path to educational success.

Karen N. Nemeth is a consultant and website provider (www.languagecastle.com) focusing on improving early childhood education to meet the needs of young dual language learners. She has published numerous articles and resource materials for schools and teachers. Her prior experience includes working with public and private schools, colleges, and nonprofit organizations.

Nancy Cloud, Ed.D., is professor emerita in the Feinstein School of Education and Human Development at Rhode Island College in Providence. Previously, she coordinated the M.Ed. in TESL program where she taught graduate courses on second language and literacy development, as well as the appropriate assessment of English learners (ELs). She continues her work as an educational consultant to school districts focused on responsive curriculum and instruction for K–12 ELs. She is a nationally renowned author and educator.

Margo Gottlieb, Ph.D., is the co-founder and lead developer for WIDA at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is also the former director of assessment and evaluation at the Illinois Resource Center. Starting her career as an ESL and bilingual teacher, Gottlieb has worked with governments, states, school districts, international schools, publishers, universities, and organizations. Over the last decade she has focused on designing English language development standards, assessment systems, and curricular frameworks. She has extensive publications, including close to 100 articles, monographs, chapters, and books. Her books address language proficiency standards, academic language use, assessment and accountability, common language assessment, and assessment of English language learners.

Dr. Diep Nguyen is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Teacher Education at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. Prior to coming to NEIU, she served as the assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction in two Illinois school districts. Dr. Nguyen was also the director for bilingual/multicultural programs in Schaumburg School District 54, where she instituted dual language programs in Spanish/English and Japanese/English.

Dr. Nguyen received her Ph.D. in educational studies from the Ohio State University. She has an M.A. in French literature and a B.S. in foreign language education. Her areas of interest include second language development and programming, assessment and curriculum development, and multilingual/multicultural education.

She serves on the Illinois State Advisory Council on Bilingual Education. She is also the co-author, with Dr. Margo Gottlieb, of Assessment and Accountability in Language Education Programs.

Prior to beginning her doctoral studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1981, Patton O. Tabors was an elementary school teacher and a childbirth educator. During her doctoral studies she focused on first and second language acquisition in young children. Her qualifying paper and dissertation research, based on 2 years of ethnographic investigation in a nursery school classroom, described the developmental pathway of a group of young children learning English as a second language. She was able to use this information as the basis for the material in One Child, Two Languages: A Guide for Preschool Educators of Children Learning English as a Second Language (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 1997). Since 1987, Dr. Tabors was the research coordinator of the Home-School Study of Language and Literacy Development in collaboration with Catherine Snow and David Dickinson. During this time she also directed research related to low-education and low-income mothers reading to their preschool-age children as part of the Manpower Development Research Corporation evaluations of two welfare-to-work projects, New Chance and JOBS, and for the Harvard Language Diversity Project, a subproject of the New England Research Center on Head Start Quality, directed by David Dickinson. Dr. Tabors's latest research, a longitudinal project that was following the language and literacy development of Spanish-speaking children from preschool to second grade, combined her interests in early language and literacy development and second language acquisition in young children.

Wayne E. Wright is the Associate Dean for Research, Graduate Programs, and Faculty Development and the Barbara I. Cook Chair of Literacy and Language in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction in the College of Education at Purdue University. He provides training for future and current educators in the areas of ESL teaching methods, literacy, assessment, technology and research. Wright has extensive experience as a researcher and practitioner in schools in the United States and internationally.

Wright is the author of numerous research articles related to language minority education, and serves as the founding editor of the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement. He has presented his research and provided training for language teachers throughout the world. In 2009 Wright was a Fulbright scholar and visiting lecturer at the Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he provided training and assistance to the university and students in the M.Ed. program.

He and his wife Phal are the parents of three amazing children.