What better way to shape student-centered education models than by asking students what barriers they encounter to learning and what aspects of their experience support their school success? In The Struggles of Minority English Learners: How Learner Feedback Can Improve English Skills, Maryann Hasso does just that. Through interviews with 10 9th and 10th grade English learners in a California high school, she explores the students’ perceptions of instructional strategies that support their sustained engagement with the English language and unearths the barriers that can inhibit their learning. One of the main features of this volume is that Hasso includes how to apply the feedback she elicited from the students and calls for individuated strategies such as building student and parent engagement, increasing opportunities for writing, fostering culturally responsive instruction, and providing students with choices in order to promote effective literacy and content teaching with English learners—turning from student struggles to student strengths.

Alison L. Bailey, Professor of Human Development and Psychology, Department of Education, UCLA