Educating Emergent Bilinguals

This Third Edition of this now classic text offers up-to-date guidance for transforming policies and practices to improve the education of emergent bilinguals.

In this updated edition, Ofelia García and Jo Anne Kleifgen are joined by Claudia Cervantes-Soon to bring forth a just vision for the education of language-minoritized students in the United States. The authors use accessible language to introduce policies, programs, research, and practices to equitably educate these students.

This widely used textbook has been expanded to explore the potential of translanguaging and the promises and pitfalls of Artificial Intelligence. It also addresses the harmful role that colonialism and raciolinguistic ideologies play, offering guidance for transforming policies and practices to improve the education of emergent bilinguals. Updated chapters consider the theoretical constructs, empirical evidence, and pedagogical practices related to the five most important aspects of the education of emergent bilinguals in K–12 classrooms: language and literacy considerations; curriculum and pedagogy; family and community engagement; assessment; and digital technologies and learning.

Readers will find innovative recommendations to help them imagine the possibilities and make changes that will transform education for some of the most disadvantaged students.

Book Features:

• Highlights the importance of leveraging all the linguistic and cultural practices of emergent bilinguals.
• Provides succinct descriptions of alternative practices for transforming our schools and students’ futures.
• Uncovers the deleterious effects of not only colonialism, but also capitalism, patriarchy, and racism.
• Considers the social cataclysms, including a global pandemic, that have affected minoritized communities, as well as teachers and students.
• Explores the development of new technologies that are altering the ways in which we educate children.

Ofelia García is professor emerita at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. She received the 2024 Literacy Research Association Distinguished Scholar Lifetime Achievement Award. Jo Anne Kleifgen is professor emerita of linguistics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University. Claudia Cervantes-Soon is associate professor of bilingual/bicultural education at Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University.

“With this timely and urgent third edition, García, Kleifgen, and Cervantes-Soon offer an essential resource that not only uncovers the painful legacies of colonialism and raciolinguistic oppression but also dares to imagine liberatory possibilities for emergent bilinguals in an increasingly complex, multilingual, multicultural, post-COVID, AI-mediated world. Rooted in justice, this work illuminates new pathways for revisioning language and literacy education with emergent bilingual students, honoring the families who shape them, and the educators who journey alongside them.”
—Zhongfeng Tian (田中锋), assistant professor of bilingual education, Rutgers University–Newark

“I’m thrilled to see a third edition of this supremely practical text, this time with a third author, Claudia Cervantes-Soon! Its first edition in 2009 shifted the field's orientation toward bilingual students, providing cutting-edge theory and practice in an accessible format. With fully updated references, this edition continues to make us better teachers and teacher educators, with increased focus on decolonial pedagogies, raciolinguistic ideologies, and critical consciousness.”
—Deborah Palmer, professor and chair, Equity, Bilingualism, and Biliteracy, University of Colorado–Boulder

"The new edition of Educating Emergent Bilinguals is an absolute must-read for all preservice teachers, educators, leaders, and policymakers committed to supporting emergent bilinguals. The third edition offers essential insights and the latest theories, policies, research, and pedagogies needed to educate, support, and advocate for these students."
—Juan A. Freire, associate professor, department of Teacher Education, Brigham Young University