Chapter 9: Immigrant Children as Dual Language Learners: A Research Review on Preschool Supports for Developing Bilinguals

The share of United States (U.S.) children who are immigrants—including both first-generation (foreign-born) and second-generation (U.S. born to immigrant parents)—has doubled in recent decades, up from 13% in 1990 to 26% in 2019 (Migration Policy Institute Data Hub, 2019), making immigrant children an increasingly relevant group of students enrolled in preschool programs in the United States.¹ Immigrant children are incredibly diverse, with a wide range of national origins, cultural backgrounds, and circumstances that led them or their parents to the U.S., as well as a variety of migration experiences and immigration statuses. Yet one common trait among the vast majority of immigrant children (90%) is that they are emerging bilinguals, living in a household that speaks at least one other language besides or in addition to English (McHugh & Hofstetter, 2021).² Commonly referred to as dual language learners (DLLs) because they are learning and developing in multiple languages, these children (along with non-immigrant children from multilingual households) compose 33% of the young child population in the U.S. (Migration Policy Institute Data Hub, 2019). Yet despite their growing presence in preschool classrooms, the predominant approach to classroom-based learning does not recognize this increasing diversity: rather, the most common educational model in preschools that serve DLLs is English immersion, where DLLs are exclusively instructed in English. This approach neglects both DLLs’ developmental strengths as bilinguals, as well as extensive evidence that the home language is a resource for their development (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine [NASEM], 2017).