New Releases by Jim Cummins

The contribution of Jim Cummins to bilingualism and bilingual education has been substantial and profound. This reader provides a comprehensive compilation of his most important and influential texts. The book also provides a detailed biographical introduction and a commentary on the growth of ideas over three decades.

Jim Cummins offers answers to the problems of the devaluation of children because of their ethnic, social or cultural backgrounds in this revised and expanded edition.

As linguistic diversity increases in countries around the world, policy-makers and educators are faced with complex and conflictual issues regarding appropriate ways of educating a multilingual school population. This volume reviews the research and theory relating to instruction and assessment of bilingual pupils, focusing not only on issues of language learning and teaching but also the ways in which power relations in the wider society affect patterns of teacher-pupil interaction in the classroom.

Video clips are used to demonstrate various techniques used in social work interviews. Text definitions of terms, text synopses of the situations used in the video clips, and a self-paced quiz are also provided in the program. The student guide includes background information on social work techniques, examples, and exercises.

The first book in the cultural literacy debate that also considers the new classroom technology available to students, Brave New Schools is a vision of schooling for the twenty-first century. A response to the work of Hirsch and Bloom, as well as a guide for parents and teachers, Brave New Schools describes a world of students, teachers, and parents globally connected by the Internet, thereby able to communicate across geographical and cultural barriers once thought impassable. Brave New Schools also contains a valuable section on K-12 networking resources, lists of published materials available, and descriptions of successful networking activities. Stunning in its implications for the future of learning guided by technology, Brave New Schools offers hopeful solutions to the problems of cultural difference and the future of our children.

This course teaches English through thematic units based on grade-level science, social studies, health, mathematics and art. There are carefully sequenced activities in listening, speaking, reading, writing and thinking and authentic assessment activities.

This book confronts the patterns of school failure often faced by subordinated minority groups in the United States. It does so by presenting a socioacademic framework that is based on the notion that all groups can have comparable access to quality schooling, comparable participation in the schooling, and derive comparable educational benefits from their participation. Organized around three key, interrelated components--communication, integration, and cooperation--the book combines theoretical concepts with actual classroom practices that support change. It moves us from a position of rhetoric about educational equality to one that actively addresses the socioacademic needs of students in a culturally diverse society.

In this book the authors decry the creation of a version of Canadian identity that actively discourages the cultivation of many of its citizens'' languages. If multilingualism is regarded as a valuable asset both for the individual and for society, then why do so many Canadians vehemently oppose the teaching of heritage languages? Why do many parents who demand that their children be given the opportunity to become bilingual in French and English protest angrily at the fact that their tax dollars are being used to teach the languages of immigrant children? Why is it appropriate to promote multilingualism in private schools but not in the public school system? Is multilingualism good for the rich but bad for the poor? Heritage Languages examines the difficulties experienced integrating heritage languages into official curricula, and the successful efforts to teach Ukrainian, Italian, Hebrew, ASL, Portuguese and Punjabi in Canadian classrooms. An Our Schools/Our Selves book.

This book analyses policy issues regarding the education of minority students in western industrialised societies and presents a number of case studies of programs that have been successful in reversing the pattern of minority students'' academic failure.

This book examines the effectiveness of alternatives to assessment and pedagogical practices for bilingual children. A central theme of the book is that practice can be improved only by a thorough re-examination of the assumptions underlying the special education enterprise.

Research literature concerning the effects of incorporating the heritage languages of minority students into the regular school curriculum either as subjects or as mediums of instruction is reviewed. Program evaluations from Canada, the United States, and Europe consistently show that the use of a minority language as a medium of instruction for all or part of the school day entails no long-term loss in the development of academic skills in the majority language. There is also evidence that bilingual programs can both encourage minority parent involvement in their children''s schooling and facilitate the development of minority students'' academic skills. However, this pattern does not invariably emerge in the evaluation data, and further research is required to understand fully the complex interactions that appear to exist between language of instruction and a range of individual, educational, and social factors. Virtually no research data are available on the academic effects of teaching heritage languages as subjects, as opposed to using the languages as a medium of instruction. Also, because most program evaluations focus primarily on academic outcomes, little or no data are available on the impact of bilingual or heritage language programs on the educational system as a whole. Three major policy implications of the research are addressed. (Author/SW)