Saville-Troike, Muriel (1936-)

Jo Anne Kleifgen

Since the beginning of her professional life, Muriel Saville-Troike has been a staunch defender of language minority children's rights to preserve their heritage language and receive a good education. Born on August 8, 1936, in Sacramento, California, she later worked as a teacher of children of migrant farm workers in California, where she sidestepped the English-only rule and used the children's native Spanish in her kindergarten classroom to assist their learning. Experiencing the language situation of these children motivated her to pursue a PhD in linguistics at the University of Texas. After receiving her doctorate in 1968, she worked in various ways to support bilingual education. Her achievements in the field include the development of bilingual materials and curricula, workshops and handbooks for bilingual educators, leadership in professional organizations to strengthen bilingual policies, and research on child second-language acquisition and learning and on native-language maintenance and loss. This entry discusses ...

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