LANGUAGE MINORITY STUDENTS IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS: AN EDUCATION IN ENGLISH, H. Douglas Adamson

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LANGUAGE MINORITY STUDENTS IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS: AN EDUCATION IN ENGLISH.H. Douglas Adamson. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2005. Pp. vii + 294. $34.50 paper.

In this theoretical-empirical textbook, Adamson presents an authoritative and critical overview of the application of behavioral and cognitive, psycholinguistic, and linguistic paradigms to the particular educational and linguistic needs of English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. schools. Each paradigm alone fails to fully account for the complexities of ELL instruction. To solve this shortcoming, Adamson applies the Vygotskian sociocultural model of learning and cognitive development, a model that integrates external behavioral and internal cognitive factors. Adamson's balanced writing includes the nation's social and political views of ELL education as well as the arguments of critics of ELL instruction, arguments he does not leave uncontested. A noteworthy dimension of this work is how the author strengthens his argument with his extensive English as a second language (ESL) and English as a foreign language teaching experience in the United States and abroad as well as his research in the field, including the report of a year-long case study of ELLs enrolled in a middle school in Arizona. The discussions of the vignettes and of the case-study results afford readers the opportunity to learn about the variables and complexities of ELL instruction through the lens of a constructivist researcher.