ABSTRACT
Globalization, technological advances, and the increasing numbers of students in classrooms worldwide who speak a first language other than a “standard” English make multicultural and multilingual education an imperative in the twenty-first century. US demographers predict that by 2020, 46 percent of the US school population will be students of color. In South Africa, students of color comprise well over 50 percent of the school population. Reports on educational achievement in both countries confirm that a large number of these students attend schools in poor, underresourced areas and that many of them are failing to achieve at their full potential. Clearly, an important goal of multicultural and multilingual education globally must be to prepare teachers to work effectively with students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The research reported here was designed to explore the application of language studies to this educational context.
