Virginia P. Collier

Dr. Virginia P. Collier is Professor Emerita of Bilingual/Multicultural/ESL Education at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where her work has focused on school effectiveness for linguistically and culturally diverse students and second language acquisition in K–12 schooling. Over several decades she has conducted influential, often longitudinal, research with Wayne P. Thomas on program models for English learners, demonstrating the long-term academic benefits of dual language and other enriched bilingual education approaches.

Collier is co-author of Educating English Learners for a Transformed World (Dual Language Education of New Mexico/Fuente Press, 2009), as well as the widely used teacher-education text Bilingual and ESL Classrooms: Teaching in Multicultural Contexts (McGraw-Hill), authored with Carlos Ovando. Her publications also include the monograph Acquiring a Second Language for School and numerous articles and reports on language minority education, teaching methods, language assessment, and curriculum development for bilingual/ESL settings.