The purpose of this study was to discover the print awareness knowledge of 25 four- and five-year-old Spanish-English bilingual children and to see if differences among the children are related to home environmental factors. The specific questions to be answered were: (1) How does the use of language varieties in the home affect print awareness? (2) How does the language of written materials in the home (whether in Spanish or English) affect print awareness? (3) In what language do children respond to print awareness tasks? (4) How does the literacy environment in the home affect print awareness? (5) How does the language of the literacy environment (whether English or Spanish) affect print awareness? (6) How does the parental attitude toward reading affect print awareness? This naturalistic study presents data collected and analyzed with the following instruments: Signs of the Environment, Level I and Level II; Pre-Schooler's Book Handling Knowledge; and a Parent Interview which was conducted in the home. The data indicate that the children whose parents said that both languages were spoken in the home had the highest percentage of appropriate responses on all three tasks. Three main factors appear to influence the language in which the child responded to the tasks. These are contextual setting, experience with the item, and television. This study was not organized in such a way as to discover whether amount of literacy in the home and its degree of use makes a difference to children's print awareness. However, it is evident from the responses given by the children that the literacy environment of the home and its surroundings does influence print awareness. This study provides ample evidence that some bilingual economically poor children have a strong support base in literacy development which schools can expand upon: (1) Bilingual children are print aware and have knowledge of books. (2) Bilingual parents care and are anxious for the children to learn. (3) Bilingual parents read to their children and provide them with opportunities to read and write in the home. (4) Bilingual homes have a variety of opportunities for literacy.

This study examines pre-service teachers' attitudes toward language diversity and linguistically diverse students. Two hundred seventy-one teacher education students were surveyed to determine relative effects of demographic, mediating variables and psychosocial variables on language attitude as measured by the Language Attitudes of Teachers Scale (LATS). Independent variables include gender, age, race/ethnicity, teacher certification sought, region, psychological insecurity, cognitive sophistication, and helpfulness viewpoint. Research questions are established and methodology is outlined. A review of related literature places the study in the context of research with a broad interdisciplinary perspective and then links the study to other research relevant to the field of education. The findings of the study indicate that gender, race/ethnicity, teacher certification sought, political ideology, psychological insecurity, and cognitive sophistication contribute significantly to the variation found in attitude toward language diversity. The paper concludes with analyses and discussions of the significant variables and suggestions for application in teacher preparation.

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