ABSTRACT
The study of codeswitching among bilinguals began in the 1950s, and it was not carried out by specialists of bilingualism. Codeswitching research has generated thousands of studies since the 1970s to the present. Some of the empirical work on codeswitching has been and continues to be highly important to education; other, more theoretical work is better suited for understanding how codeswitching works in various contexts with different languages in contact. One area of language study that has contributed to a macro understanding of bilingualism in schools and communities, and in many ways to a separate language policy in schools, is the work done by sociologists of language, the most important being the work of Joshua A. Fishman. Many of the bilingual teacher educators who teach in US-based bilingual credential, licensure, and endorsement programs view themselves as highly proficient in a language other than English.
