CALL FOR COMMISSIONED PAPERS--Immigrants, Education, and Language

[Harold F. Schiffman]

                               Call for Commissioned Papers
                                  Deadline: July 1, 2006

The University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute (UC LMRI) and
the Arizona State University Linguistic Minority Research Initiative (ASU LMRI) of
the Mary Lou Fulton College of Education Institute announce a Call for Commissioned
Papers on the topic of "Immigrants, Education, and Language."

More than 10 million school children in the United States are first or second
generation immigrants. One of the traditional functions of U.S. public schools has
been to help prepare immigrants for successful integration into American society.
This not only includes teaching them English, but also providing academic and social
supports to meet the increasingly high standards for subject matter competency, high
school graduation, and college access. Yet the achievement of immigrant students,
even those who have mastered English, lags behind those of other students.

UC LMRI and ASU LMRI will commission up to eight papers addressing important issues
of policy and practice concerning the education of immigrant students, with a focus
on language. Papers may address such questions as:

 *  What are the educational challenges in meeting the needs of immigrant students?
 *  To what extent are those needs related to language versus other factors?
 *  What educational practices are most effective in meeting those needs?
 *  What skills and competencies do teachers need to successfully educate these
    students?
 *  What educational policies are needed to promote effective practices?
 *  To what extent are immigrant heritage and community languages (HL-CLs) being
    retained or lost?
 *  What efforts are being made at the community level to retain immigrant HLs-CLs?
 *  What is the relationship between HL-CL retention and academic achievement?

The commissioned papers should be 20-30 pages in length and present new research or
synthesize existing research. Authors will be paid $2500 and travel costs to present
their papers at a three-day conference to be held May 3-5, 2007 in Phoenix, Arizona.

Interested scholars should send a two-page, single-spaced prospectus of their
proposed paper by July 1, 2006 to Russell Rumberger, Director, UC LMRI at:
russ at lmri.ucsb.edu. Proposals will be evaluated on relevance to theme, knowledge of
literature, methodology, and quality of writing. Authors will be notified by August
1, 2006. Draft papers must be completed by March 1, 2007.