The authors-a researcher in Latino educational issues and a sociologist specializing in migration-collaborated to more fully understand and explain the schooling circumstances of Mexican indigenous students. After elaborating a conceptual framework of transationalism, the researchers present three types of results: (a) critical understandings about Mexican-origin migration for U.S. educators, (b) themes from a series of interviews with Mexican indigenous families and U.S. and Mexican educators, and (c) teacher research on the complex question of the language of instruction for Mexican indigenous students. The authors contend that once educators understand each country's role in U.S.-Mexican migration, conceptions of unsuccessful migrants are dispelled, and they can move to a focus on optimizing students' opportunities for success. Also, results from the family and school personnel interviews revealed a pattern of both challenges, such as extreme discrimination against Mexican indigenous students, and strengths, such as recognition of the cultural and linguistic strengths that Mexican indigenous students bring to school. The findings resulting from this interdisciplinary collaboration, along with initial results from teacher research showing promise for multilingual instruction for Mexican indigenous students, generated identification of issues for future research with a severely understudied population of multilingual students in U.S. schools.

This article discusses the special education placement and instruction of language-minority children identified as mildly disabled, personified by “Rosemary,” in the context of a curriculum guide recently developed in California, The Optimal Learning Environment (OLE) Curriculum Guide: A Resource for Teachers of Spanish-Speaking Children in Learning Handicapped Programs. The guide was written in response to the growing number of such children and to the lack of direction given to special educators in meeting the educational needs of this population. The instructional principles in the guide are based on research with language-minority students and on those with learning disabilities. The guide incorporates existing, promising materials and techniques for use with language-minority populations.

This study examined the nature and process of change among five bilingual special education teachers as they attempted to modify existing instructional practices. Three factors affected the change process: (a) The more special education training in the teachers' background, the stronger their reductionist orientation; (b) change involves shifts in instructional practices and shifts in beliefs, and they do not automatically go hand in hand; and (c) change is most facilitated at the beginning stages of collaboration by including practicing members of the teachers' occupational community as agents of change.

Bilingual students' language and literacy skills were compared across three classroom events in a special day classroom for students with language learning disabilities. Events ranged from the teacher-structured, formal class openings to the informal, peer-structured socio-dramatic play. Results showed that certain contextual features were associated with enhanced student performance, whereas others were associated with communicative breakdowns and problems with literacy tasks. This ethnographic study, in conjunction with other naturalistic research on bilingual special education classrooms, undergirds the Optimal Learning Environment (OLE) Project by identifying effective instructional contexts for bilingual students identified as having language learning disabilities.

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