The present volume seeks to enable language and education practitioners, researchers, and interested lay readers alike to get a sense of the range of issues being pursued in language and education research and the array of methods employed to do so. A major assumption of the volume is that both micro and macro perspectives and both social and linguistic levels of analysis are critical for an understanding of the interaction between language and education. It is organized in four parts, focusing in turn on language and education in relation to society, variation, culture, and interaction. The contributing scholars hail from five continents and nine countries; they represent a great diversity of linguistic, cultural, and disciplinary traditions. For all that, what is most impressive about this volume is the unity of purpose and outlook with regard to the central role of language as both vehicle and mediator of educational processes and to the need for continued and deepening research into the limits and possibilities that implies.