Jim Cummins is Professor in the Modern Language Centre, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning in the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. In May 1997, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters from the Bank Street College of Education in New York. His research has focused on multiculturalism and minority language education, bilingual education, psycholinguistics, critical pedagogy, language and the school curriculum, learning disabilities, computer networking in education. He has served as a consultant on language planning in education to numerous international agencies. His latest publications include: Language, power, and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire (Multilingual Matters, 2000), Negotiating identities: Education for empowerment in a diverse society (California Association for Bilingual Education, 2001). He is co-editor with Sandra Schechter of Multilingual education in practice: Using diversity as a resource ( Heinemann , 2003).

Chris Davison is currently Associate Professor in English Language Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong. She has had many years' experience as an ESOL teacher, teacher educator and consultant in primary, post-primary and adult settings in the Asian-Pacific and Middle Eastern region. She is a former President of the Australian Council of TESOL Associations and current Chair of the Research Interest Section of the international TESOL organization. She has researched and published extensively on the interface between English as a mother tongue and ESOL development, the theory and practice of "mainstreaming", collaborative approaches to integrating language and content in schools and school-based English language assessment. Her most recent publications include English as a second language in the mainstream: Teaching, learning and identity (Longman Pearson, 2001, with Prof Bernard Mohan and Constant Leung), Innovation andInformation Technology in Language Education (Hong Kong University Press, 2004) and a book on English language teaching internationally (Multilingual Matters, forthcoming, with Constant Leung).