This article reports the results of a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of peer-mediated learning for English language learners. Peer-mediated learning is presented as one pedagogical tool with promise for interrupting a legacy of structural and instructional silencing of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Oral language (n = 13) and written language (n = 28) outcomes were analyzed, and main effects analyses indicate that peer mediation is highly effective at promoting both oral (g = .578, p = .000) and written language (g = .486, p = .000). A number of moderator analyses were conducted, and study-quality variables were the most important moderators across outcome types. Importantly, qualitative analysis of moderator variables provides tentative evidence that peer-mediation was more effective the more that students' L1 was used for instruction, and ELLs performed better in unsegregated environments where they had both language support services and access to native-English-speaking peers.

In this paper, we utilize the theory of translanguaging to make sense of the biliterate activities of young emergent bilinguals in a before-school program for Latinx students at an elementary school. Our findings show that even early writers are able to draw from their full linguistic repertoire, utilizing orthographic and syntactic resources consciously, and continue to do so with increasing complexity as they get older and gain greater competence. The children in our study show how emergent bilinguals exhibit exceptionally sophisticated considerations of audience as they write across linguistically and culturally-diverse communities, navigating these in their writing, as they do in their daily lives. Opportunities for students to demonstrate and develop these skills are critical, especially in monolingual settings.

Although a variety of research has investigated the use and benefits of home language in school settings, research on using translation to support school learning is scarce. With the goal of designing a differentiated and culturally relevant strategy that supports the reading of bilingual students, we worked with seventh-grade students in pull-out settings. After reading narrative texts, we invited students to collaboratively translate and evaluate thematically connected excerpts. Using distributed cognition and distributed expertise as a theoretical perspective, this qualitative case study shows that collaborative translation made student expertise visible and mediated the way that students participated and negotiated meaning.

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This meta-analysis examines the effectiveness of a group of instructional approaches (i.e., cooperative, collaborative, and peer tutoring) at improving literacy outcomes for English language learners. Main effects analyses of a sample of 28 experimental and quasi-experimental studies reveal that peer-mediation is more effective for ELLs than individualized or teacher-centered comparison conditions (g=.486, SE=.121, p<.001). A number of potential moderators were examined, and two study quality variables proved significant. Also, grade level was a significant moderator, with middle school students demonstrating much smaller gains than elementary or high school students. Finally, descriptive analysis of moderators provides tentative evidence that ELLs showed greater gains on word-level outcomes than text-level outcomes and that interventions for which peer-mediation was one of several tightly-woven components were twice as effective as interventions utilizing peer-mediation alone.