Monday, May 8, 2000
2:00 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
1539 Longworth House Office Building
Moderator -- Donna Christian, Center for Applied Linguistics
Concluding Remarks -- John Baugh, Stanford University
(with generous support from the Ford Foundation)
or Email: info@cossa.org by May 1,
2000
Speaker Bios
John Baugh is Professor of Education and Linguistics at Stanford University. A former president of the American Dialect Society, Baugh has published extensively on linguistic diversity among minority groups in the United States, with special attention to African American populations. A member of the Linguistic Society of America's (LSA) Executive Committee, he is also a member of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and the American Anthropological Association (AAA). He has recently published, Out of the Mouths of Slaves: African American Language and Educational Malpractice (University of Texas Press, 1999), and Beyond Ebonics: Linguistic Pride and Racial Prejudice (Oxford University Press, 2000). Baugh is also the author of Black Street Speech: Its History, Structure, and Survival (1983), as well as a co-editor of African-American English: Structure, History, and Usage (1998). He earned his Ph.D. in linguistics in 1979 from the University of Pennsylvania.
Maria Estela Brisk is a Professor of Education at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. Her research and teacher-training interests include bilingual education, bilingual language and literacy acquisition, and methods of teaching literacy. She has served as a consultant in legal matters pertaining to bilingual education, and has worked closely with regional and local groups and school systems in developing their bilingual programs. A fluent speaker of Spanish, Brisk was the 1991 Boston University recipient of the Metcalf Cup and Metcalf Prize for excellence in teaching. Brisk is the author of the books Bilingual Education: From Compensatory to Quality Schooling and Literacy and Bilingualism: A Handbook for ALL Teachers (Lawrence Earlbaum Associates). She earned her Ph.D. in linguistics and bilingual education at the University of New Mexico in 1972.
Donna Christian is President of the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) in Washington, DC, where she is active in research, program evaluation, policy analysis, and professional development. Her work focuses on the role of language in education, including issues of second language learning and dialect diversity. Christian serves on the Board of Directors of the Joint National Committee for Languages and on several editorial and advisory boards. She currently directs a program of research on two-way immersion programs, including a study for the Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE). Christian recently co-authored Profiles in Two-Way Immersion Education (Delta Systems, 1997) and Dialects in Schools and Communities (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999), and has published papers on "Looking at Federal Education Legislation from a Language Policy/Planning Perspective" and "Language and Policy Issues in the Education of Immigrant Students." She has a B.S. in mathematics from St. Lawrence University and a M.S. in applied linguistics and Ph.D. in sociolinguistics from Georgetown University.
Lily Wong Fillmore is Professor in the School of Education at University of California, Berkeley. She directs The Family, Community and the University Partnership, which prepares Indian leaders and professionals to conduct research in formal and informal educational institutions in American Indian communities in the Southwest. Her research has focused on issues related to the education of language minority students, and her professional specializations are in the areas of second language learning and teaching, the education of language minority students, and the socialization of children for learning across cultures. The particular focus of her research and publications has been on social and cognitive processes in language learning, cultural differences in language learning behavior, sources of variation in learning, and primary language retention and loss. Since 1984 she has served as a member of the Advisory Board of the University of California's Linguistic Minority Research Institute. Some of her recent publications include: "Reclaiming Communities and Languages," in the Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare (1998) and "Equity and Education in the Age of New Racism: Issues for Educators," in the Journal of Social Science (1997). She was the 1993 Honoree of the Year by the National Associations of Bilingual Educators, and served as a member of the Educational Testing Service's (ETS) Visiting Committee from 1997-1999.
William Labov is Professor of Linguistics and Psychology and Director of the Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests focus on sociolinguistics, specifically on language change and variation, linguistic geography, American dialects, and African American Vernacular English. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and co-editor of the journal Language Variation and Change. The President of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) in 1979 and Sapir Professor at the LSA's 1986 Linguistic Institute, his book, Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 1 (1994), won the LSA's Leonard Bloomfield Book Award in 1996. He was a member of the National Research Council Committee on the Prevention of Reading Difficulties in Young Children whose report was published in 1999. The Director of the Atlas of North American English (in press), some of his recent publications include: "A Graphemic-Phonemic Analysis of the Reading Errors of Inner City Children" (1998) and "Raising Reading Levels of African American Student in Inner City Schools" (in press).