Mila Schwartz
Biographic Data
| ID | 3844856 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Mila Schwartz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Mila |
| FAMILY NAME | Schwartz |
| SIGNATURE | SCHWARTZ M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Oranim Academic College of Education |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3175-9357 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Exploring Young Children’s Use of Language Learning Strategies
This study aimed to identify young school students’ language learning strategies (LLSs) within their diverse socio-linguistic reality. The study was conducted in one elementary school in a peripheral city characterized by a heterogeneous population (Arabs and Jews) and immigrants from various countries who speak multiple languages. The principal of this school opted to introduce young children (Grades 1 and 2) to four languages: Hebrew, as a soci…
“Preschool complements home; home complements preschool”
Awareness in inflectional morphology in emergent Arabic/Hebrew bilingual children
Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of the structural and morpho-phonological similarities between Arabic and Hebrew on cross-linguistic interactions. Thus, this paper presents the results of a 6-month study testing the developmental trajectory of inflectional morphology awareness skills among Arabic–Hebrew and Hebrew–Arabic emergent bilingual children. Methods: One hundred and four preschool bilingual and monolingual…
Arik's journey among the children’
This case study investigated how a preschool teacher in a linguistically and culturally diverse Israeli city exercised her agency through an innovative classroom initiative designed to foster language awareness and cultural knowledge among children aged 5–6. The teacher, an immigrant herself, designed ′Arik’s Journey Among the Children’, in which a symbolic doll travelled with each child to their home, returning with records of family language an…
Towards the Well-Being of Linguistically and Culturally Diverse Children
The role of teachers’ funds of knowledge and identity in the linguistically and culturally diverse classroom
This study aimed to explore how teachers' funds of knowledge and identity shape their beliefs and knowledge about linguistically and culturally diverse students and mediate the respective practices in the classroom. The study was conducted in a state religious secondary school in southern Israel, where approximately half of the students and teachers were immigrants. It adopted two qualitative research methods: case study and educational ethnograp…
Child agency in early language development and learning
Guardians of the Circassian Heritage Language
The Circassian language is the heritage language (HL) of a small minority group in Israel. Since its classification as an endangered language around the globe, the focus has been put on effective maintenance programs. Changes in education methods within Circassian communities were inevitable. In Israel, the Circassian Maintenance Program is crucial in primary schools, where formal literacy instruction in the Circassian language begins in fifth gr…
Towards a better understanding of preschool teachers’ agency in multilingual multicultural classrooms
How can team teaching succeed? Exploring team building and its critical characteristics in preschool bilingual education
The aim of this study was to explore how team is built and how it works as a type of social interaction in preschool bilingual education . More specifically, we asked how teachers of the societally dominant language (Hebrew) and heritage language (Russian) to 3–4-year-olds make decisions about their teamwork and what makes this work successful in the different domains of classroom environment. This study draws on case study and mini ethnography a…
Exploring children's language-based agency as a gateway to understanding early bilingual development and education
The study aimed to take a zoom on differences between young children in the way they express their language-based agency in learning languages in a preschool bilingual classroom. Because agency is a sociocultural and contextually embedded phenomenon and children enact it through interaction with proximal and distant environmental systems, we aspired to understand how these differences are related to ecological factors such as the child’s linguist…
She doesn’t speak Hebrew, she speaks English
Limited research to date has addressed the language socialisation of transnational children during global movement with their parents. The aim of this study was to explore the complexity of language socialisation for a transnational child experiencing a multilingual environment both at home and in preschool. This transnational English – and Spanish-speaking girl was immersed in two novel languages, Hebrew and Arabic, in a bilingual Hebrew- and Ar…
“In writing, I simply do not distinguish between the sounds
Young children’s language-based agency in multilingual contexts in Luxembourg and Israel
Drawing on two longitudinal case-studies, this study aimed to identify some salient characteristics of the agentic behaviour of two young emergent multilinguals in two different multilingual contexts: Luxembourg and Israel. Despite the fact that the studies were conducted independently, the two cases were analysed together owing to the similarities in the research methods such as video-recorded observations, and semi-structured interviews with te…
The role of play in creating a language-conducive context in a bilingual preschool
The current study was part of a large project focusing on bilingual development11 Broadly, a child’s bilingual development can be defined as growing up in a home or being engaged in an educational environment where two different languages are spoken or taught in the preschool classroom context. Its aim was to theorize free play as a social and language learning activity that provides opportunities for young learners to move towards second languag…
Toward a better understanding of the language conducive context
Van Lier’s [2004. The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning: A Sociocultural Perspective. Boston: Kluwer Academy] concept of ecology of language learning is applicable to our focus on children’s active engagement in bilingual preschool classroom activities, which are conducive to language learning. The aim of this study was to explore the nature of relationships between these activities and phases in L2 progress and to identify the activitie…
How do you say it in Arabic, in Hebrew, in English?’ Towards a better understanding of children’s agentic behaviour in novel language learning
The aim of this study was to explore patterns of children’s agency enactment in second-language learning as reflected in their language learning and social interactions in a bilingual Arabic–Hebrew-speaking classroom. We examined the connection between these behaviour patterns and the children’s L2 progress in the bilingual classroom. The study used purposive sampling to select five information-rich cases that were representative of the bilingual…
Towards a Better Understanding of a Continuum of Heritage Language Proficiency
The study presented here has three goals: (1) to identify types of errors in the noun inflectional morphology in Russian as a heritage language among Russian-speaking adolescents in Israel (n=11), the United States (n=11), Finland (n=14), and Germany (n=9), (2) to compare errors in speech production between these groups, and (3) to investigate the impact of Russian language use at home and in educational settings (formal bilingual education versu…
We are creating a reality’
This study was conducted within the context of bilingual Arabic-Hebrew medium preschools in Israel which were established to incorporate instruction in the native languages of both majority and minority children in the classroom. Bilingual education in various settings produces a wide variety of outcomes in terms of language proficiency, cultural awareness, and scholastic achievement. The purpose of the present study was to examine teacher agency…
Early language development and education
While agency per se has been extensively theorised, the notion of agency in education has not received the attention it merits. This issue is part of a new wave of agency research that focus on the
Twenty-first-century preschool bilingual education
Early childhood is a critical period in a child’s intensive social, emotional, linguistic and cognitive development, and preschool serves as the first transitional step from home to the wider socia
‘Why do we know Hebrew and they do not know Arabic?’ Children’s meta-linguistic talk in bilingual preschool
Language-focused listening to young children’s talk provides insight into their internal thinking mechanisms regarding language as they engage in language learning. The aim of this exploratory longitudinal study was to examine and analyze children’s meta-linguistic talk and its main characteristics in a bilingual Arabic–Hebrew-speaking preschool. This talk takes the form either of short comments or of fully fledged discursive events. The target p…
Two languages in the air
Bilingual preschool education is under researched compared with bilingual school education. There is also a lack of research on bilingual preschool teachers’ agency and how they negotiate between two languages in the classroom. We examined the language practices of five bilingual preschool teachers working within three different socio-linguistic settings, in Finland (Finnish–Swedish and Russian–Finnish contexts) and Israel (an Arabic–Hebrew conte…
Acquisition of Russian gender agreement by monolingual and bilingual children
Aim and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The main goal of this study was to examine noun–adjective gender agreement in Russian by comparing bilingual children with diverse L2 backgrounds (English, Finnish, German, and Hebrew) with age-matched monolingual children and monolinguals one year younger. This comparison was made to investigate the influence of L2 grammar on the acquisition of gender agreement by (L1) Russian-speaking children. Des…
The acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew (L2) by bilingual preschool children (Russian-L1)
In this longitudinal study, we examined bilingual children’s acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew (L2). Hebrew distinguishes between definite and indefinite nouns by marking definiteness by article. We recorded the speech of nine bilingual Russian–Hebrew-speaking children ranging in age from three to four years old in monthly sessions over a period of seven months. Their age of onset of acquisition of Hebrew (L2) ranged from six to 42 months. Th…
Exploring the Relationship between Family Language Policy and Heritage Language Knowledge Among Second Generation Russian–Jewish Immigrants in Israel
The family unit and home domain have been and remain important in heritage language maintenance efforts. There are complex relationships between parental language attitudes, their application in everyday language management activities and the children's knowledge of home language vocabulary. The present large-scale study examined the family policy factors affecting first language (L1) maintenance among second generation Russian–Jewish immigrants …
Bilingual teachers' language strategies
Parents' Discourses About Language Strategies for Their Children's Preschool Bilingual Development
The study focused on immigrant parents' discourses about strategies for their children's preschool bilingual development and education. The article investigated how immigrant parents described and explained these strategies. The study was based on semi-structured interviews with 4 families. The 8 parents were Russian-speaking immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union. Analysis of the data showed that all the parents desired their children…
Narrative development among language-minority children
The development of script schema, as a source of narrative knowledge, is an essential stage in this knowledge construction. This study focused on the role of bilingual versus monolingual preschool education in the development of script schema knowledge in Russian (L1) and Hebrew (L2) among Russian/Hebrew-speaking children in Israel. The preschool bilingual education was based on the ‘first language first approach’ with L2 immersion around age thr…
Parents' assessment of their preschool children's bilingual development in the context of family language policy
Parents' assessment of children's development in the first and the second language is an essential part of their family language policy (FLP) and an important component of parent–child communication. This paper presents a pilot study focused on Russian-speaking immigrant parents' assessment of their children's language knowledge in Russian as a first language and Hebrew as the second language in the context of their FLP. The research questions we…
Exploring children's language-based agency as a gateway to understanding early bilingual development and education
The study aimed to take a zoom on differences between young children in the way they express their language-based agency in learning languages in a preschool bilingual classroom. Because agency is a sociocultural and contextually embedded phenomenon and children enact it through interaction with proximal and distant environmental systems, we aspired to understand how these differences are related to ecological factors such as the child’s linguist…
Early language development and education
While agency per se has been extensively theorised, the notion of agency in education has not received the attention it merits. This issue is part of a new wave of agency research that focus on the
Socio-linguistic factors in second language lexical knowledge
The factors affecting the mastery of the host country's language by the children of immigrants are important in the study of immigration-related issues. This exploratory study analyses the possible link between parental socio-linguistic background factors (parent–child language choice, parental proficiency in L2, educational level, socio-economic status, and the length of residence in the host country) and the children's social milieu on the one …
How do you say it in Arabic, in Hebrew, in English?’ Towards a better understanding of children’s agentic behaviour in novel language learning
The aim of this study was to explore patterns of children’s agency enactment in second-language learning as reflected in their language learning and social interactions in a bilingual Arabic–Hebrew-speaking classroom. We examined the connection between these behaviour patterns and the children’s L2 progress in the bilingual classroom. The study used purposive sampling to select five information-rich cases that were representative of the bilingual…
We are creating a reality’
This study was conducted within the context of bilingual Arabic-Hebrew medium preschools in Israel which were established to incorporate instruction in the native languages of both majority and minority children in the classroom. Bilingual education in various settings produces a wide variety of outcomes in terms of language proficiency, cultural awareness, and scholastic achievement. The purpose of the present study was to examine teacher agency…
Toward a Better Understanding of First Language Vocabulary Knowledge
The objective of this study was to evaluate the first language (L1) vocabulary knowledge in a large-scale sample (n = 70) of second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrants in Israel. The interest in this research population follows from the unique demographic, sociocultural, linguistic, and psychological distinctiveness of RJ immigration in Israel. The study focused on the question of whether the L1 vocabulary knowledge of second-generation children…
Child agency in early language development and learning
She doesn’t speak Hebrew, she speaks English
Limited research to date has addressed the language socialisation of transnational children during global movement with their parents. The aim of this study was to explore the complexity of language socialisation for a transnational child experiencing a multilingual environment both at home and in preschool. This transnational English – and Spanish-speaking girl was immersed in two novel languages, Hebrew and Arabic, in a bilingual Hebrew- and Ar…
Through the lens of teachers in two bilingual programmes
Educators and researchers increasingly recognise the impact of language policies on bilingual education. The present study examined the similarities and differences in how the teachers and principals in two different contexts, a Mandarin–English bilingual programme in a Canadian kindergarten and elementary school and a Russian–Hebrew bilingual preschool programme in Israel, understood their language programmes and made curriculum decisions with r…
Teachers’ views on organizational and pedagogical approaches to early bilingual education
Learning to read in English as third language
The present study compared the influence of bi-literate bilingualism versus mono-literate bilingualism on the development of literary skills in English as L3. Two main predictions were made. First, it was predicted that Russian (L1) literacy would benefit decoding and spelling acquisition in English (L3), that is, bi-literate bilingualism would be superior to mono-literate bilingualism. Second, it was hypothesized that there would be positive tra…
Exploring the Relationship between Family Language Policy and Heritage Language Knowledge Among Second Generation Russian–Jewish Immigrants in Israel
The family unit and home domain have been and remain important in heritage language maintenance efforts. There are complex relationships between parental language attitudes, their application in everyday language management activities and the children's knowledge of home language vocabulary. The present large-scale study examined the family policy factors affecting first language (L1) maintenance among second generation Russian–Jewish immigrants …
Delayed acquisition of irregular inflectional morphology in Hebrew in early sequential bilingualism
Acquisition of the irregular forms of inflectional morphology may be a challenge for bilingual students because of the possible effect of infrequent input. Focusing on irregular plural forms of languages such as Hebrew can contribute to better understanding how bilingual children cope with anomalous morphological forms. The present study compares Russian— Hebrew-speaking sequential bilingual children with Hebrew-speaking monolingual children in t…
Toward a Better Understanding of First Language Vocabulary Knowledge
The objective of this study was to evaluate the first language (L1) vocabulary knowledge in a large-scale sample (n = 70) of second-generation Russian-Jewish immigrants in Israel. The interest in this research population follows from the unique demographic, sociocultural, linguistic, and psychological distinctiveness of RJ immigration in Israel. The study focused on the question of whether the L1 vocabulary knowledge of second-generation children…
Socio-linguistic factors in second language lexical knowledge
The factors affecting the mastery of the host country's language by the children of immigrants are important in the study of immigration-related issues. This exploratory study analyses the possible link between parental socio-linguistic background factors (parent–child language choice, parental proficiency in L2, educational level, socio-economic status, and the length of residence in the host country) and the children's social milieu on the one …
Immigrant Parents' Choice of a Bilingual Versus Monolingual Kindergarten for Second-Generation Children
This study investigated how immigrant parents describe and explain their family language policy concerning their child's preschool bilingual development, and also explored the factors linked to the parents' choice of bilingual or monolingual kindergarten for their child. The study design was based on a comparison of 2 groups of parents: those who chose bilingual versus monolingual kindergartens. The research model consisted of 3 groups of variabl…
Family language policy
Researchinthefieldofminoritylanguagemaintenanceandlossregardsthefamily as the central driving force in children’s language socialization within the context of both minority and majority languages. The present review of current literature focuses on the emergingfield of family language policy and addresses the following three components: ideology, management and practice. The integrated survey reviews research on the intra-family factors that can …
Facing bilingual education
This article examines how majority-language teachers coping with additive education view their roles in a bilingual framework, how they perceive issues of culture and language in young bilingual children, and how they understand the term ‘bilingual education’ in an L2 non-additive context. The study has been conducted in the context of pre-school bilingual education of second generation Russian-Hebrew speaking immigrants from the former Soviet Un…
Parents' Discourses About Language Strategies for Their Children's Preschool Bilingual Development
The study focused on immigrant parents' discourses about strategies for their children's preschool bilingual development and education. The article investigated how immigrant parents described and explained these strategies. The study was based on semi-structured interviews with 4 families. The 8 parents were Russian-speaking immigrants to Israel from the former Soviet Union. Analysis of the data showed that all the parents desired their children…
Teachers’ views on organizational and pedagogical approaches to early bilingual education
Lexical knowledge development in the first and second languages among language-minority children
This study focused on the role of bilingual versus monolingual preschool education in the development of lexical knowledge in Russian (L1) and Hebrew (L2) among second-generation Russian-Hebrew speaking immigrants in Israel. The study was designed as a longitudinal and comparative study. The lexical knowledge of children was measured three times during the education year. Thirty-two Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals (around age three) were selec…
Parents' assessment of their preschool children's bilingual development in the context of family language policy
Parents' assessment of children's development in the first and the second language is an essential part of their family language policy (FLP) and an important component of parent–child communication. This paper presents a pilot study focused on Russian-speaking immigrant parents' assessment of their children's language knowledge in Russian as a first language and Hebrew as the second language in the context of their FLP. The research questions we…
Successful Family Language Policy
Narrative development among language-minority children
The development of script schema, as a source of narrative knowledge, is an essential stage in this knowledge construction. This study focused on the role of bilingual versus monolingual preschool education in the development of script schema knowledge in Russian (L1) and Hebrew (L2) among Russian/Hebrew-speaking children in Israel. The preschool bilingual education was based on the ‘first language first approach’ with L2 immersion around age thr…
Bilingual teachers' language strategies
The Acquisition of Noun Plurals among Early Sequential Russian-Hebrew Speaking Bilinguals
The focus of the present study was the trajectory of the acquisition of noun pluralization in Hebrew as a window into the development of inflectional morphology among early sequential Russian-Hebrew speaking bilinguals. Our participants were six early sequential bilingual children between 36 and 42 months of age at the beginning of the study, who acquired Russian (L1) at home and at preschool within a ‘first language first approach’ and whose age…
How do previously acquired languages affect acquisition of English as a foreign language
The present study aims to examine the linguistic and orthographic proximity hypothesis in new script acquisition by comparing the performance of Circassian L1 speaking children who are emerging quadri-literates with Hebrew L1 speaking children who are emerging biliterates. Tests in decoding and spelling various English target conventions were conducted. Thirty 10 year old Circassian L1 speaking children were compared to 46 Hebrew L1 speaking chil…
Acquisition of Russian gender agreement by monolingual and bilingual children
Aim and Objectives/Purpose/Research Questions: The main goal of this study was to examine noun–adjective gender agreement in Russian by comparing bilingual children with diverse L2 backgrounds (English, Finnish, German, and Hebrew) with age-matched monolingual children and monolinguals one year younger. This comparison was made to investigate the influence of L2 grammar on the acquisition of gender agreement by (L1) Russian-speaking children. Des…
The acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew (L2) by bilingual preschool children (Russian-L1)
In this longitudinal study, we examined bilingual children’s acquisition of definiteness in Hebrew (L2). Hebrew distinguishes between definite and indefinite nouns by marking definiteness by article. We recorded the speech of nine bilingual Russian–Hebrew-speaking children ranging in age from three to four years old in monthly sessions over a period of seven months. Their age of onset of acquisition of Hebrew (L2) ranged from six to 42 months. Th…
Through the lens of teachers in two bilingual programmes
Educators and researchers increasingly recognise the impact of language policies on bilingual education. The present study examined the similarities and differences in how the teachers and principals in two different contexts, a Mandarin–English bilingual programme in a Canadian kindergarten and elementary school and a Russian–Hebrew bilingual preschool programme in Israel, understood their language programmes and made curriculum decisions with r…
Twenty-first-century preschool bilingual education
Early childhood is a critical period in a child’s intensive social, emotional, linguistic and cognitive development, and preschool serves as the first transitional step from home to the wider socia
‘Why do we know Hebrew and they do not know Arabic?’ Children’s meta-linguistic talk in bilingual preschool
Language-focused listening to young children’s talk provides insight into their internal thinking mechanisms regarding language as they engage in language learning. The aim of this exploratory longitudinal study was to examine and analyze children’s meta-linguistic talk and its main characteristics in a bilingual Arabic–Hebrew-speaking preschool. This talk takes the form either of short comments or of fully fledged discursive events. The target p…
Two languages in the air
Bilingual preschool education is under researched compared with bilingual school education. There is also a lack of research on bilingual preschool teachers’ agency and how they negotiate between two languages in the classroom. We examined the language practices of five bilingual preschool teachers working within three different socio-linguistic settings, in Finland (Finnish–Swedish and Russian–Finnish contexts) and Israel (an Arabic–Hebrew conte…
We are creating a reality’
This study was conducted within the context of bilingual Arabic-Hebrew medium preschools in Israel which were established to incorporate instruction in the native languages of both majority and minority children in the classroom. Bilingual education in various settings produces a wide variety of outcomes in terms of language proficiency, cultural awareness, and scholastic achievement. The purpose of the present study was to examine teacher agency…
Early language development and education
While agency per se has been extensively theorised, the notion of agency in education has not received the attention it merits. This issue is part of a new wave of agency research that focus on the
Psychology (37 works) · Linguistics (34 works) · Multilingual Education and Policy (33 works) · Pedagogy (27 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Hebrew (24 works) · Mathematics education (16 works) · Neuroscience of multilingualism (16 works) · Language Development and Disorders (15 works) · Developmental psychology (13 works)