James Cummins

is a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto where he works on language learning and literacy development of learners of English as an additional language. Cummins studied psychology at the National University of Ireland. He received his degree in Educational Psychology at the University of Alberta in 1974. He targets teachers to think in new ways about their students whose first language is other than English or French. He shows how to use students' own languages as an asset in the classroom in order to enhance home-school connections and overall literacy development. Jim Cummins has written and presented many works on second language learning and leteracy development.