We report the formation of oligomers with side-chain sequence control using ruthenium-catalyzed alternating ring-opening metathesis polymerization (AROMP). These oligomers are prepared through sequential, stoichiometric addition of bicyclo[4.2.0]oct-1(8)-ene-8-carboxamide (monomer A) at 85 °C and cyclohexene (monomer B) at 45 °C to generate sequences up to 24 monomeric units composed of (A-alt-B)_n and (A′-alt-B)_n microblocks, where n ranges from 1 to 6. Herein, monomer A has an alkyl side chain, and monomer A′ has a glycine methyl ester side chain. Increasing microblock size from one to six results in an increasing water contact angle on spin-coated thin films, despite the constant ratio of hydrophilic and hydrophobic moieties. However, a disproportionately high contact angle was observed when n equals 2. Thus, the unique all-carbon backbone formed in the AROMP of bicyclo[4.2.0]oct-1(8)-ene-8-carboxamides and cyclohexene provides a platform for the nontemplated preparation of materials with specific sequences of side chains.

Persistent educational inequity for immigrant and refugee students and their families calls for instructional practices centering on access, quality, and social justice. Drawing on two qualitative case studies, this article examines how three U.S. urban school teachers attended to the systemic inequalities and unique challenges confronting immigrant and refugee students both inside their classrooms and outside the school. Our analyses show that the teachers strategically enacted various critical instructional practices, including linguistically responsive pedagogy, translanguaging, and sociopolitically responsive pedagogy. The teachers’ agentic practices have important implications for teacher education and professional development for immigrant and refugee learners in urban settings.

This study was designed to examine the role of early bilingual home literacy experiences (HLE) (including parent–child shared reading, parents’ direct teaching in Chinese and English, the availability of books in both languages, and children’s access to digital devices for bilingual learning) in the biliteracy development of 66 Chinese–Canadian first graders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Descriptive analyses reveal that overall, parents report higher engagement in English than in Chinese across the four HLE measures. Parent’s engagement in bilingual HLE differs by gender, SES, and immigration status. Pearson correlational analyses of English reading, decoding, and bilingual oral receptive vocabulary reveal that the four dimensions of HLE are not strongly related to English early literacy skills but are positively related to Chinese receptive vocabulary. Finally, hierarchical regression analyses indicate that the availability of books in Chinese and parent–child shared reading in Chinese are key factors associated with Chinese receptive vocabulary score variance; the amount of time using digital devices is found to be significantly related to English reading comprehension, but not Chinese vocabulary; and parents’ direct teaching is not significant with either English early literacy skills or Chinese receptive vocabulary. These findings have important implications for parental engagement in early bilingual home literacy activities and early literacy instruction in school.

Bilingual children in the North American context significantly improve in English language proficiency, but their heritage language learning varies between different linguistic groups. This mixed methods study was designed to explore the developmental patterns in bilingual vocabulary among Chinese-Canadian first-graders’ (N = 75) and to identify home factors that may have contributed to divergent bilingual developmental trajectories. Cluster analyses were conducted to identify underlying discrepancy profiles in bilingual oral lexicon. Four children with contrasting bilingual profiles were selected for qualitative analysis to explore home factors that may have contributed to the discrepancies. Thematic analyses of parental interviews revealed several family factors such as beliefs and attitudes toward bilingualism, quality literacy engagement, and sibling dynamics, that all appearing to contribute to the discrepancies.