Contents List of Figures List of Tables Preface and Acknowledgments (and a Caveat) Part I Bilingual Education for All 1 Introducing Bilingual Education Scenarios Overview Introduction What Is Bilingual Education? Beneficiaries and Reasons Geopolitics and Language Orientations Summary Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading Part II Bilingualism and Education 2 Languaging and Education Overview Introduction Language Constructions Languaging Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading 3 Bilingualism and Translanguaging Overview Introduction Bilingualism and Translanguaging Models of Bilingualism Questioning Assumptions Bilingual Abilities Bilingual Development Neurolinguistic and Psycholinguistic Considerations Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading 4 The Sociopolitics of Bilingualism Overview Introduction Transglossia Language Maintenance, Shift and Revitalization Language Ideologies Language Policy as Right and Resource Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading 5 Benefits of Bilingualism Overview Introduction Cognitive Advantages Social Advantages Intervening Factors Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading Part III Bilingual Education Policy 6 Bilingual Education: Frameworks and Types Overview Introduction: The Social Context Bilingual Education Models? Bilingual Education Theoretical Frameworks Bilingual Education Types Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading 7 Bilingual Education: Factors and Variables Overview Introduction Situational Factor Operational Factor Outcome Factor Integrating Situational, Operational, and Outcome Factors Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading 8 U.S. Language Policy in Education Overview Introduction The Past The Present Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading Important Websites 9 Language Promotion by European Supra-national Institutions Overview Introduction The Council of Europe The European Commission Bilingual Education: CLIL/EMILE Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading Important Websites 10 Monoglossic Bilingual Education Policy Overview Introduction Policy for Transition: Transitional Bilingual Education Policy for Maintenance and Enrichment: Maintenance Bilingual Education Policy for Enrichment of Social Elite: Prestigious Bilingual Education Policy for Enrichment of Language Majorities: Immersion Bilingual Education Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading 11 Heteroglossic Bilingual Education Policy Overview Introduction Policies for Language Revitalization: Immersion Revitalization Bilingual Education Policies for Development of Minority Languages: Developmental Bilingual Education Policy for Plurilingualism across Groups: PolyDirectional or Two-Way Bilingual Education (Dual Language) Policies for Plurilingualism within Groups: CLIL and CLIL-Type Bilingual Education Policies for Multiple Languages: Multiple Multilingual Education Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading Part IV Bilingual Education Practices 12 Bilingualism in the Curriculum Overview Introduction Bilingual Allocation Bilingual Arrangements Bilingual Practices: Translanguaging Models of Bilingual Teaching Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading 13 Bilingual Education Pedagogy and Practices Overview Introduction Bilingual Education Approaches and Methods Principles and Practices of Bilingual Education Pedagogy Strategies: Scaffolding Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading 14 Biliteracy Practices and Pedagogy Overview Introduction A Sociocultural Approach The Continua of Biliteracy Models of Biliteracy Use Biliteracy Sequencing Written Language and Texts Instructional Approaches The Biliteracy Workshop Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading 15 Assessment of Bilinguals Overview Introduction The Power of Assessment Assessing Bilinguals Democratic Assessment for Bilinguals Conclusion Questions for Reflection Further Reading Part V: Bilingual Education for the Twenty-first Century Conclusion Appendix: Myths and Realities Bilingual Education: What It Is Myths and Facts across the Globe Notes Bibliography Author Index Subject Index Para Ricardo Otheguy por tu paciencia, generosidad y amor For Joshua A. Fishman for sharing your insights and lessons This edition first published 2009 © 2009 Ofelia García Blackwell Publishing was acquired by John Wiley & Sons in February 2007. Blackwell’s publishing program has been merged with Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical, and Medical business to form Wiley-Blackwell. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, United Kingdom Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of Ofelia García to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. 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If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data García, Ofelia. Bilingual education in the 21st century: a global perspective/Ofelia García; with contributions by Hugo Baetens Beardsmore. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–4051–1993–1 (hardcover: alk. paper) — ISBN 978–1–4051– 1994–8 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Education, Bilingual. I. Beardsmore, Hugo Baetens. II. Title. III. Title: Bilingual education in the twenty-first century. LC3715.G37 2008 370.117—dc22 2008017214 List of Figures Figure 3.1 Subtractive Bilingualism Figure 3.2 Additive Bilingualism Figure 3.3 Recursive Bilingualism Figure 3.4 Dynamic Bilingualism Figure 3.5 Proficiency Separate Underlying Proficiency/Common Underlying Figure 5.1 Relationship between Language and Culture Figure 6.1 Subtractive Bilingual Education Theoretical Framework Figure 6.2 Additive Bilingual Education Theoretical Framework Figure 6.3 Recursive Bilingual Education Theoretical Framework Figure 6.4 Dynamic Bilingual Education Theoretical Framework Figure 6.5 Type of Bilingualism and Type of Bilingual Education Program Figure 8.1 Timeline of Bilingual Education Policy in the United States Figure 13.1 Cognitive Demands and Contextual Support in Bilingual Pedagogy Figure 14.1 Continua of Biliteracy Figure 14.2 Convergent Monoliterate Model Figure 14.3 Convergent Biliterate Model Figure 14.4 Separation Biliterate Model Figure 14.5 Flexible Multiple Model Figure 14.6 Literacy Education in Transitional Bilingual Education Programs Figure 14.7 Transaction with Written Texts Figure 14.8 Emphasis of Reading Activities with Emergent vs. Fluent Bilinguals List of Tables Table 1.1 Differences between Bilingual Education and Language Education Table 1.2 Sociohistorical and Sociolinguistic Orientations and Bilingualism Table 2.1 Internet World Users by Language Table 2.2 Second-Language Users Table 3.1 Models of Bilingualism Table 3.2 Language Abilities Table 3.3 Type of Bilingual Ability and Language Ability Table 4.1 Independence vs. Interdependence in Language Planning Table 6.1 Bilingual Education Models According to Hornberger (1991) Table 6.2 Contextual and Structural Characteristics According to Hornberger (1991) Table 6.3 Theoretical Frameworks of Bilingual Education Table 6.4 Theoretical Framework and Bilingual Education Types Table 6.5 Children and Bilingual Education Types Table 6.6 Initial Language Emphasis and Bilingual Education Types Table 6.7 Types of Bilingual Education and Characteristics Table 7.1 Macro-Factors and Interdependent Variables for BE Policies Table 8.1 States that Have Adopted English Only Laws Table 8.2 Language Spoken at Home by 5–17-year-olds Table 8.3 Languages Spoken at Home by 5–17-year-old Schoolchildren in States with High Concentration of LOTE Speakers Table 8.4 Number of Bilinguals and Emergent Bilinguals among Schoolchildren of Different Language Groups Table 8.5 School Districts in Cities and Number and Proportion of Emergent Bilinguals Ranked by Number Table 8.6 Increase of Immigrant Population per State, 1990–2000 Table 8.7 Region of Birth of Foreign-born Population in the U.S., 1910– 2000 Table 8.8 Languages Spoken by U.S. Emergent Bilinguals Table 8.9 Language Education Programs in the U.S. Today Table 8.10 English Total Reading for Emergent Bilinguals in Different Kinds of Programs Table 8.11 Spanish Total Reading for Students in Different Kinds of Programs Table 8.12 Top Twelve Languages Studied in Colleges and Universities in the U.S Table 9.1 Illustrations of Good Practice Table 10.1 Language Policies and Bilingual Education Types: Monoglossic Beliefs Table 10.2 Types of Monoglossic Bilingual Education and Characteristics Table 11.1 Planning Heteroglossic Beliefs Language and Bilingual Education Types: Table 11.2 Primary School Program: Number of Hours Devoted to Language as Subject Table 11.3 Lower Secondary School Program: Language as Subject Lessons per Grade Table 11.4 Curriculum Framework 2007–2012 Orissa Table 11.5 Types of Heteroglossic Bilingual Education and Characteristics Table 12.1 Bilingual Arrangements, Strategies and Models of Teaching Table 13.1 Instructional Approaches and Methods in Bilingual Education Table 13.2 Bilingual Education Pedagogy Principles Table 13.3 Language Objectives for the Bilingual Classroom Table 13.4 Principles and Dimensions of Bilingual Pedagogy Table 13.5 Scaffolding Structural Components Table 14.1 Biliteracy Models, Goals and Bilingual Education Frameworks Table 14.2 Types of Scripts and Languages Table 14.3 Strategies for Mini-Lessons during Shared Reading Table 16.1 Integrative Table: Bilingual Education Preface and Acknowledgments (and a Caveat) This book has been the result of a long trajectory. Originally, the book was conceived as a co-authored work with Hugo Baetens Beardsmore. The finished book contains two chapters that are solely authored by Hugo Baetens Beardsmore, and two which he co-authored. These chapters contain his name, and his role may be visible to the readers. What may not be visible, however, is the extent of Hugo Baetens Beardsmore’s contributions to the entire book. Hugo read, commented, gave of his expertise, and expanded on all the chapters. And we negotiated much. When he generously decided that his name should not appear as author, I intended to alert the reader whenever he had made an addition. I soon discovered that this was impossible because his contributions are so extensive. Because his voice is intertwined with mine throughout, there is a “we” voice across the book, which I have chosen to retain. I owe much gratitude to Hugo Baetens Beardsmore. This book could not have been written without your support and encouragement. You have been a faithful email correspondent and a wonderful teacher. I am grateful for your extensive knowledge and experience, your generosity, and, especially, your sense of humor. Although this book was written during my years at Teachers College, Columbia University, much about bilingual education was learned during the years I spent in two other institutions: the City College of New York and the Brooklyn Campus of Long Island University. At the City College, my colleague and husband, Ricardo Otheguy expanded my vision of bilingual education. And progressive educators such as the late Lillian Weber, the late Miriam Dorn, as well as my early colleagues in the bilingual education field, Gerardo Torres and Carole Berotte Joseph, shaped my first conceptualizations of how to educate language minorities. During my years at Long Island University, I was blessed with a colleague and good friend, Cecelia Traugh. Cecelia taught me to use language carefully and descriptively, to observe children’s work deeply, to work collaboratively with others. Her impact has been extensive. The work done with colleagues in International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University has greatly influenced my thinking in the last years. I want to thank particularly the four colleagues with whom I have closely collaborated – Lesley Bartlett, JoAnne Kleifgen, Hervé Varenne, and María TorresGuzmán, my colleague in the bilingual education program. Another colleague, Patricia Velasco, read the chapter on practice in this book and offered suggestions. But it is perhaps the students at Teachers College to whom I owe the greatest debt. During the fall of 2007, my graduate students read part of the manuscript and commented on it extensively; this text incorporates some of their observations. Some of my students couldn’t be held back. Cristina Muir and Yesenia Morales insisted on developing “Myths and Realities,” that is here adapted and included as appendix. Yi-Sheng Lin developed the original questions for the first few chapters. Lori Falchi, always willing to do more, gave me valuable comments on the last four chapters, developed the original questions for those, and extended “Myths and Realities.” Ameena Ghaffar-Kucher and Jeehyae Chung read and commented on Part I of the book. Zeena Zakharia ensured that the Arabic context received attention by authoring a section which is here included in chapter 11. Elizabeth Huaman Sumida insisted that Native Americans be given space and shared information. My colleague and doctoral student, Tori Hunt, an expert on practice, commented extensively on the relevant chapters and gave me suggestions. Kate Menken, my first doctoral student at Teachers College, and now a professor at CUNY and languagepolicy scholar, read those chapters carefully. I could not have done this without the exchange with all my students. I thank all of you who read and commented on it. During the course of the preparation of the manuscript I had four graduate Research Assistants – Cambria Russell, Debra Cole, Robert Werner, and Carmina Makar. Each of them had particular strengths and worked at different times. Cambria started the bibliography, and read and commented on the early chapters. Debra, a scholar on Deaf bilingual education, taught me much about the education of the Deaf, questioned my writing and my assumptions, and continued building the bibliography.1 She insisted that the Deaf be treated like all others – integrated throughout, and not treated separately. She wrote a section on the Deaf which appears in chapter 11. Rob Werner has been a most careful reader of the entire manuscript. He caught all kinds of infelicities, and finalized the bibliography. He worked with attention to detail, often with tight demands. Carmina Makar came to me towards the end of the process, but her help has been invaluable. These four graduate students have received very little financial compensation for the enormous work they have done. My only hope is that they have learned from me, as much as I have learned from them. I am very grateful to the four of you. Arsen Babaev, the Bilingual Education Secretary, kept my administrative load light while I paid attention to this book thank you. The book also benefited greatly from the comments of six anonymous reviewers. I thank you for your careful reading and generous recommendations. During my years studying bilingual education, I have collaborated with many different colleagues, all of whom have influenced me in a variety of ways. You know who you are and I thank you. I have to especially mention Jim Cummins, Christine Hélot, Nancy Hornberger, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Guadalupe Valdés as people who have taught me much and whose friendship I value. And I would be remiss if I didn’t express my gratitude to Colin Baker. Many years ago, before he had written Foundations of Bilingual Education, Colin visited me in New York; I was touched by his insightfulness and his generosity. And perhaps no other book on bilingual education has been more influential to my students and to myself than his Foundations. His friendship and support have been a gift. I have had the blessings of family throughout my life – a tight Cuban family with roots and branches here, there; in Puerto Rico and Mexico. My immediate family my son, Eric, my two daughters, Raquel and Emma, and my husband, Ricardo have taught me what it is to be a bilingual Cuban American family in New York, with all its vicissitudes and wonders. Many times you waited for dinner and other things, as I worked on this and many other writings. Los quiero mucho. Les agradezco mucho el que me quieran, se quieran, y quieran a los demás. Flying hearts to all of you! The last words are always saved for those who have had the most influence in one’s work, the two men to whom I dedicate this book – Ricardo Otheguy and Joshua A. Fishman. Almost thirty years ago I studied with Joshua A. Fishman. I often remark that everything I know, I learned in Fishman 101. I always take refuge in Fishman’s work and words to think about bilingual education. It is not often that one has a most generous mentor who also becomes a good friend. As I have gotten older, I often model my manner with my students on how Fishman treated me as a young and inexperienced graduate student – always trusting and pushing me beyond my limits. The lessons have been well learned. And how can I talk about a husband and colleague? Ricardo walked into my life as a colleague, but we have been a family for over a quarter of a century. Ricardo has been a most patient listener, and he has given me room to disagree, to hold different views. He has never complained about the attention I pay to my students and my work, even though sometimes it takes away from things that we both hold dear. I have learned more from him than from any other, about language, but also about history, politics, and life in general. Aunque te admiro como intelectual, es tu dulzura y tu generosidad lo que más valoro. Es lo que me da el sentido de esperanza, lo que me permite que mi imaginación vuele, y lo que me ayuda a tener fe en un mejor futuro – uno de paz, de amor, de compromiso social y de tolerancia – regalos que tú me has dado. Finally, a caveat for the readers. This book has many limitations, but among the most serious are the western and speaking lenses that dominate. Although bilingual and somewhat traveled, both Hugo and I are hearing, and we are both products of European and North American scholarship. And although we strove to extend beyond our geographical and intellectual limits, it is not a completely global and inclusive picture that emerges. My only hope is that it will stimulate scholars from around the world, and in particular from all nondominant contexts, to challenge and expand what we discuss here. Part I Bilingual Education for All 1 Introducing Bilingual Education Scenarios A Bilingual Education Classroom in New York, U.S. “Go to the computers in your head,” Ms. Acuña says, as twenty-five pairs of hands grasp their heads and begin making motions. Children tap their foreheads intently, determined to find “their computer.” This is a bilingual kindergarten classroom in Queens, New York. Ms. Acuña’s class is comprised of U.S. Latino students of different backgrounds who are learning English. Her students speak Spanish at home, but Ms. Acuña will focus on promoting literacy and numeracy in both Spanish and English. She continues, “Find your mouse and press English only. Okay? Is everybody there? English only, no español.” Now that the kindergarten class is set on English only, Ms. Acuña reads a book in English, asks questions in English, and expects her students to respond accordingly. Patricia tells Ms. Acuña that the first thing to do when it is time to read is to “look at the title.” Yuniel raises his hand and says, “I see a bear.” The comments begin with a flood – “I see a basket.” “I see two bugs.” “I see un carruaje.” When it is time for the math lesson, Ms. Acuña tells the students to go back to their computer, this time to switch to Spanish. The class will count backwards and forwards, using their dedito señadito to track the numbers on the page – “cero, uno, dos, tres…” They learn the value of a penny, and one student counts five pennies. “Son cinco pennies,” he says. To this, Ms. Acuña responds, “Sí, tienes razón, pero estamos en español. ¿cómo se dice pennies en español?” (That’s right, but remember we are in Spanish. So, how do we say “pennies” in Spanish?) This gentle reminder acknowledges a correct answer without complaining about the language in which it is given. In this classroom, both languages are correct. They are valuable tools the children access, via the computer in their brains, to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic. A glance at the walls reinforces this idea. The room is adorned with posters, calendars, wall charts, alphabet, and other visuals labeled twice, in red and blue – blue for English, red for Spanish. And there’s a poster that reads “Te lo digo, y no hay engaño, ser bilingüe es una dicha que nos dura todo el año” (I tell you, and it’s no joke, being bilingual is a happiness that lasts throughout the year). Bilingualism is highly valued in Ms. Acuña’s class. Although all of the children are Spanish speakers, the class spends each school day toggling back and forth from one language to the other without so much as a flinch. Written by Kristin Jefferson, December 11, 2006 A Bilingual School in Japan On the floor of a second-grade classroom, Atsuko and Michiko are working on math problems in English. One of them says: “We start with four. We take away one. How many are left?” The other one replies: “Three are left.” Afterwards, the other child initiates the dialogue and changes the numbers. They are in an immersion program in Katoh School where, in the first three grades, approximately two thirds of the instruction takes place in English, whereas one third of the time is devoted to developing Japanese language and literacy. In fourth grade, approximately 50 percent of the instruction is in English and 50 percent is in Japanese. Atsuko and Michiko will continue into high school where they will follow both the Japanese curriculum and that of the International Baccalaureate. They will then be taking most of their classes in English. For more on this school, see www.bi-ingual.com/School/ElementaryProgram.htm. Overview In this introductory chapter, we consider the following features of bilingual education: its definitions and characteristics; its beneficiaries and reasons; its geopolitics and language orientations. Introduction This chapter develops the main thesis of this book: that bilingual education is the only way to educate children in the twenty-first century. In this chapter, we develop an integrated plural vision for bilingual education, by which bilingualism is not simply seen as two separate monolingual codes – a vision that goes beyond “one plus one equals two.” This plural vision depends upon the reconceptualization of understandings about language and bilingualism, further developed in Part II of this book – Bilingualism and Education. Here we reconstitute the activity known as “bilingual education;” we reposition bilingual education for the twenty-first century, while building on the scholarship of the past; and we outline how this inclusive plural vision of bilingual education has the potential to transform the lives of children and adults throughout the world. We also introduce the reader to the ways in which sociohistorical positionings, geopolitical forces, and language ideologies interact to sustain different kinds of bilingual education policies throughout the world. In considering this, the chapter introduces another complexity to the topic of bilingual education: states, nations, and social groups have different histories, needs, challenges, and aspirations for their children; therefore different educational options need to be available. This point will be further developed in Part III of this book – Bilingual Education Policy where bilingual education theoretical frameworks and types, as well as languagein-education policies throughout the world, will be reflected upon. In considering definitions of bilingual education, we also approach another main thesis of this book: that bilingual education practices must be extended to reflect the complex multilingual and multimodal communicative networks of the twenty-first century. Part IV of this book – Bilingual Education Practices – suggests curricular, pedagogical, and assessment practices that respond to this complexity. What Is Bilingual Education? Definitions and characteristics What is bilingual education? We think immediately of someone who has a good command of two languages as bilingual; and of the use of two languages in education as bilingual education. But, as Cazden and Snow (1990) point out, bilingual education is “a simple label for a complex phenomenon.” Colin Baker (1993: 9), one of the most perceptive scholars in the field of bilingual education, suggests that sometimes the term bilingual education is used to refer to the education of students who are already speakers of two languages, and at other times to the education of those who are studying additional languages. Some students who learn additional languages are already speakers of the majority language(s) used in their society, while sometimes they are immigrants, refugees, Indigenous peoples,1 members of minoritized groups,2 or perhaps even members of the majority group,3 learning a different language, the dominant language, in school. Bilingual education refers to education in more than one language, often encompassing more than two languages (Baker, 2001). Because of the complexity surrounding bilingual education, many people misunderstand it. In the United States, for example, many lay people think that teaching immigrants using only English is bilingual education. Bilingual education is different from traditional language education programs that teach a second or a foreign language. For the most part, these traditional secondor foreign-language programs teach the language as a subject, whereas bilingual education programs use the language as a medium of instruction; that is, bilingual education programs teach content through an additional language other than the children’s home language. For example, in the scenarios at the beginning of this chapter, Spanish and English are media of instruction in Ms. Acuña’s kindergarten, whilst Japanese and English are used in instruction in the program in Japan. More than anything else, bilingual education is a way of providing meaningful and equitable education, as well as an education that builds tolerance towards other linguistic and cultural groups. In so doing, bilingual education programs provide a general education, teach in two or more languages, develop multiple understandings about languages and cultures, and foster appreciation for human diversity. Traditional second- or foreign-language programs often aim to use only the target language in instruction, whereas bilingual education programs always include some form of more than one language in at least some parts of instruction. Although the approach may be different, the development of some type of bilingualism is accomplished in both language-teaching programs4 and bilingual education programs. Depending on the type of language-teaching and bilingual education program followed, it may be difficult to differentiate between bilingual education and second- or foreign-language teaching programs. As we shall see, language-teaching programs in the twenty-first century increasingly integrate language and content, therefore coming to resemble bilingual education; and bilingual education programs are paying more attention than ever to explicit language instruction, therefore coming to resemble languageteaching programs. And although many second-language and foreignlanguage programs pay lip service to using only the target language in instruction, in reality bilingual ways of using languages (more on this below) are very often present in these programs – in the instructional material used, in the language use of the teacher, and certainly in the language use of the children. Moreover, sometimes in bilingual education programs one finds a language ideology that is very similar to that found in language-teaching programs, with teachers attempting to use only the target language in instruction: that is, no translation is provided and the teacher never uses both languages within the same lesson. But what continues to separate these two kinds of programs has to do with the broader general goal of bilingual education – the use of two languages to educate generally, meaningfully, equitably, and for tolerance and appreciation of diversity5 – and the narrower goal of second- or foreign-language teaching – to learn an additional language. In educating broadly, bilingual education focuses not only on the acquisition of additional languages, but also on helping students to become global and responsible citizens as they learn to function across cultures and worlds, that is, beyond the cultural borders in which traditional schooling often operates. In educating equitably, bilingual education focuses on making schooling meaningful and comprehensible for the millions of children whose home languages are different from the dominant language of school and society. This last aim is particularly relevant for the education of immigrants, refugees, Indigenous peoples throughout the world (for example, Tribal peoples in India and Bangladesh), autochthonous minorities, and many African and Asian children. The differences between bilingual education and language education programs are displayed in Table 1.1. Table 1.1 Differences between Bilingual Education and Language Education Bilingual Education Foreign or Second-Language Education Overarching Goal Educate meaningfully6 and some type of bilingualism Competence in additional language Academic Goal Educate bilingually and be able to function across cultures Learn an additional language and become familiar with an additional culture Language Use Languages used as media of instruction Additional language taught as subject Instructional Use of Language Uses some form of two or more languages Uses target language mostly Pedagogical Emphasis Integration of language and content Explicit language instruction Even the widely accepted definition of bilingual education being the use of two languages in education is not straightforward. As Baker (2001: 4) points out, “the ownership of two languages is not so simple as having two wheels or two eyes.” And being educated bilingually cannot be equated to being given two balanced wheels like those of a bicycle: bilingual education is not simply about one language plus a second language equals two languages. The vision of bilingual education as a sum of equals reduces bilingual education to the use of two or more separate languages, usually in different classroom spaces, time frames, contexts, or as spoken by different teachers. In this reductive view, bilingual education has been often interpreted as being the simple sum of discrete monolingual language practices. Separate and full competencies in each language are expected of students. Furthermore, these “idealized” bilingual education practices take little account of how languages are used in society, or of real bilingual and multilingual practices. Throughout this book, we refer to the language ideologies that support language practices in bilingual education as being like the two balanced wheels of a bicycle, as “monoglossic.” Monoglossic ideologies of bilingualism and bilingual education treat each of the child’s languages as separate and whole, and view the two languages as bounded autonomous systems. We contrast this monoglossic language ideology to one based on Bakhtin’s (1981) use of heteroglossic as multiple voices. A heteroglossic ideology of bilingualism considers multiple language practices in interrelationship, and leads to other constructions of bilingual education, which we consider in the next section.7 A new angle In the twenty-first century, our complex multilingual and multimodal global communicative networks8 often reflect much more than two separate monolingual codes. More than a bicycle with two balanced wheels, bilingual education must be more like a moon buggy or all-terrain vehicle, with different legs that extend and contract in order to ground itself in the ridges and craters of the surface. Communication among human beings, and especially of children among themselves and with their teachers, is full of craters, ridges, and gaps. And when this communication occurs among children speaking different languages, or among children speaking one language and the teacher speaking the other, these features are particularly salient. A bicycle just would not do for this terrain. And so, a bilingual education that values only disconnected wholes and devalues the often loose parts, and insists on the strict separation of languages is not the only way to successfully educate children bilingually, although it is a widely conducted practice. As will be seen in Part III of this book, there are many paths (and types of programs) that lead to differentiated levels of bilingual practice and use. Bilingual education that is adaptive, able to expand and contract, as the communicative situations shift and as the terrain changes, is precisely what all children in the twentyfirst century need. What is important for bilingual education, then, may not always be the full language parts in isolation, but the quality and the effectiveness of the integrated sum. One plus one does not always equal two. The complex networks in which children participate require us to have a different vision than the linear and directional one embodied in the traditional sum. Language practices are not unidirectional but polydirectional. We could compare today’s language practices to the South Asian banyan trees,9 which grow up, out, down, horizontally, or vertically through the air until they come upon something solid. The language practices of bilinguals are interrelated and expand in different directions to include the different communicative contexts in which they exist. The varied bilingual practices in schools protect identities, communities, and relationships, much in the same way that the roots of banyan trees in, for example, the doorway in the Ta Prohm Temple at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, help preserve the structure. Children do not enter school as cohorts with static and homogeneous language uses. Their language practices cannot be added to in linear fashion, since the children come and go into schools at different times, in different grades, having different language resources. And they bring a variety of language practices to the classroom that interact with the language practices of school, changing their own and those of the schools. What is needed today are practices firmly rooted in the multilingual and multimodal language and literacy practices of children in schools of the twenty-first century, practices that would be informed by a vision starting from the sum: an integrated plural vision. Educating children bilingually enables language practices that, like the banyan trees, build on each other in multiple ways and directions – up, out, down, across but yet rooted in the terrain and realities from which they emerge. Bilingual education, for us, is simply any instance in which children’s and teachers’ communicative practices in school normally include the use of multiple multilingual practices that maximize learning efficacy and communication; and that, in so doing, foster and develop tolerance towards linguistic differences, as well as appreciation of languages and bilingual proficiency. Our definition, then, does not depart greatly from the ways in which others have defined bilingual education. Where we perhaps differ is in grounding bilingual education firmly on the language and literacy practices that we observe in schools, on what has become widely known as “bilingual encounters” (Martin, 2003), instead of on theoretical frameworks of how language ought to be and ought to function, frameworks that have little to do with actualizing the potential of children’s intellect, imagination, and creativity. In other words, we aim to have bilingual education reconceptualized in response to the social interaction among students, teachers, and other members of the educational community, using two or more different languages, not merely as abstract language practices devoid of the complex social realities of multilingualism. These more complex understandings of languages and bilingualism, or, rather, of the way that people use languages, are the topic of Part II of this book. And this reconceptualization also has important implications for curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment in bilingual education, the subject of Part IV of this book. Reimagining Bilingual education in the twenty-first century must be reimagined and expanded, as it takes its rightful place as a meaningful way to educate all children and language learners in the world today. In this book we have chosen to use “bilingual education,” rather than “multilingual education,” as the umbrella term to cover a wide spectrum of practice and policy. Bilingual education, as we shall see in future chapters, takes on many different forms, and increasingly, in the complexity of the modern world, includes forms where two or more languages are separated for instruction, but also forms where two or more languages are used together in complex combinations. All of these are, to us, instances of bilingual education. For the sake of brevity, and for continuity with past practice, we have decided to both reimagine and extend the term, and show “the entire beast as a multisplendored thing” (Fishman, 1976: p. x). Our use of “bilingual education” encompasses what many have referred to as “multilingual education” (see, for example, Cenoz and Genesee, 1998; García, Skutnabb-Kangas, and Torres-Guzmán, 2006). The European Commission also uses the term “multilingual education” to refer to its policy of “mother tongue plus two other languages for all” (European Commission, 2003). UNESCO adopted the term “multilingual education” in 1999 in the General Conference Resolution 12 to refer to the use in education of at least three languages: the mother tongue, a regional or national language, and an international language (UNESCO, 2003). Our use of the term “bilingual education” also includes these instances of trilingual and multilingual education. Bilingual education is here used to refer to education using more than one language, and/or language varieties, in whatever combination. In today’s globalized world, bilingual education is at times criticized, on the one hand, because it is seen as maintaining separate linguistic enclaves, and, on the other, because it does not accommodate the linguistic heterogeneity of the times. For example, in the United States bilingual education is often blamed, first, for the ghettoization10 of U.S. Latino11 students in segregated classrooms, and, second, for the lack of attention paid in these programs to ethnolinguistic minorities other than Latinos. But although U.S. Latinos are often educated in segregated classrooms, these arrangements have much more to do with residential and social class segregation than with bilingual education per se. And although it is important to pay attention to all children with different ethnolinguistic profiles, it is Latino children who are often most in need of bilingual education programs in the U.S., for they constitute the greatest proportion of English-language learners in the country (approximately 75 to 79 percent), and yet receive but scant attention. Besides, as we will see in Chapter 8, there are bilingual education programs in the United States in many languages besides Spanish and English. Bilingual education is also often blamed because nations and states12 seeking legitimacy in the twentieth century have often claimed an immutable relationship between language and identity, using bilingual education as a means to strengthen that link (Heller, 1999). For example, referring to some of the nations of Spain, such as Galicia and Catalonia, Del Valle and GabrieleStheeman (2002) explain that, as nation-states had done since the Enlightenment, the Spanish entities that achieved some autonomy following the end of the dictatorship of Francisco Franco based their language-ineducation policy on an ideology that linked their identity and language strictly and unidirectionally. Although all these criticisms are taken on board, they do not constitute reasons for abandoning the many practices associated with bilingual education, but are rather arguments for expanding them. In fact, now more than ever, the world recognizes the importance of bilingual education; although it chooses, many times, to call it by other names, as we will see in Part III of this book. In the United States, the growth of immigration and migration, especially of Spanish speakers, has unleashed a reaction against bilingual education, leading to the substitution of the term “bilingual” by the term “English language acquisition.”13 The states of California, Arizona, and Massachusetts have declared bilingual education illegal. And the term “bilingual education” is often attached only to programs for recently arrived immigrants that are transitional in nature, and not to programs that include speakers of English and where two languages are used throughout the child’s education. In fact, these two-way bilingual education programs in the United States are now called, in many instances, dual language education, again silencing the word “bilingual.” Within the European Union, bilingual education is being promoted under the banner of CLIL/EMILE, acronyms which refer to “Content and Language Integrated Learning/Enseignement d’une Matière par l’Intégration d’une Langue Etrangère” (CLIL/EMILE, 2002). The choice of CLIL/EMILE responds to the fact that the term “bilingual education” is politically loaded for certain European countries, even though these are bilingual programs that use more than one language in instruction.14 In Canada, the persistent voices of First Nations peoples, and their efforts to revitalize and maintain their languages, continue to challenge the limitation of bilingual education only to the languages of power: English and French (see, for example, Heller, 1999, for Canada). And the recognition of the multilingualism of many countries in Africa and Asia in particular has also served to question the viability of bilingual education in only two languages in a more complex sociolinguistic order. Throughout the world, bilingual education practices are becoming more popular than ever, and we use the term “bilingual education” because it enables us to link to the research, scholarship, policy, and practice of the last fifty years. We also use it because bilingual education is centered in schools15 where curriculum and assessment are mostly linear, inducing educators to think of language acquisition in similar ways. Thus, usually children are initially schooled bilingually, that is, in two languages, even when the intent is to develop proficiency in more than two languages, or even when many more than two separate languages are used in instruction. There is much scholarship on bilingual pedagogy, bilingual curriculum, and bilingual assessment, and “multilingual” only refers to its multiplicity. Programs that educate teachers to use more than one language in instruction are also most often referred to as bilingual education programs. Another reason for using the term “bilingual education” is that it remains appropriate, as we will see in future chapters, for ethnolinguistic groups who live in bilingual contexts where two languages predominate, or for whom the use of two languages in schooling seems sufficient. In sum, although we recognize that in some instances bilingual education is simply not enough, we prefer the term “bilingual education” here because it is more grounded in theory, research, practice, and reality than “multilingual education.” We also think that it is easier to understand the complexity of bilingual education if we start with a discussion of two languages, and then extend these notions when considering more multilingual possibilities. In what follows we briefly consider the reasons for bilingual education, which will be expanded upon in Chapter 5. Beneficiaries and Reasons Beneficiaries The overarching principle of this book is that some form of bilingual education is good for all education, and therefore good for all children, as well as good for all adult learners. This is a principle that we have always held; one that was well established by Fishman (1976). Bilingual education is good for all – language majorities, that is, powerful ethnolinguistic groups, as well as language minorities, those without power. An education that is bilingual is good for the rich and the poor, for the powerful and the lowly, for Indigenous peoples and immigrants, for speakers of official and/or national languages, and for those who speak regional languages. Bilingual education is not only good for children in gifted and talented programs, but also good for children in vocational and technical education, as well as for those in special education. It is important for hearing children, as well as Deaf children. Bilingual education is also good for adults in lifelong language-learning situations, since bilingual individuals enjoy cognitive and social advantages over monolinguals (see Chapter 5). As Fishman (1978b: 47) has said: “In a multilingual world it is obviously more efficient and rational to be multilingual than not, and that truism increasingly applies to the whales, as well as the minnows.” Although the state and particular ethnolinguistic groups might benefit collectively from bilingual education,16 the value of bilingual education is in what it offers children, youths and adults in general. Bilingual education has the potential of being a transformative school practice, able to educate all children in ways that stimulate and expand their intellect and imagination, as they gain ways of expression and access different ways of being in the world. Speaking specifically about the potential of bilingual education for the United States, Fishman (1978b: 1) states: “Bilingual education is a celebration of liberation from provincialism for those who know only English and liberation from self-doubt for those who haven’t yet learned English.” Reasons It has been long recognized that schools play a key role in social and cultural reproduction (Apple, 1982). The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1991) has linked education to reproduction of the social order. Bourdieu proposes that we view education as capital, an asset of quantifiable value. At schools, students acquire cultural capital, that is, knowledge, abilities, and strategies related to the presentation of self; as well as symbolic capital having to do with respectability and worthiness. Also valuable is linguistic capital, the ability to use appropriate norms of language. Being able to use languages effectively, Bourdieu argues, increases one’s “wealth” because it allows one to interact with others in various social contexts. In a sense, knowing how to use a language is a way of gaining cultural and symbolic capital. By using a language effectively, one can gather information and build self-worth through social interactions. Bourdieu believes that the ability of students to build linguistic capital is dependent mostly on the education they receive, and thus schools play a major role in regulating language as capital and mediating access to it. Monolingual education has at times been used as a way to limit access and legitimate the linguistic practices of those already in power. Bilingual education has the potential to give access to languages of power.17 And bilingual education can also legitimize language practices in a minoritized language, giving authenticity to the bilingual practices of many. As such, bilingual education can be transformative. As Lewis says (1978: 20, our italics): “Bilingual education has been advocated for entirely pedagogical reasons, while the fundamental rationale for the proposal is to bring about greater political, economic, and social equality [… A]ll forms of education are concerned with the redistribution of power or the maintenance of its current distribution.” As we will see throughout this book, bilingual education can bring about greater social equality. The tensions surrounding bilingual education often have to do with dominant groups protecting their power. Before we start critically examining our views of languages, bilingualism, and bilingual education in Part II of this book, it is important to consider how geopolitical and sociohistorical forces have shaped the study of bilingual education. We offer here a general historical perspective of how the field of bilingual education has evolved. But geopolitical forces affect states or social groups differently, so bilingual education options co-exist in the twenty-first century, as we will further consider in Part III of this book. Geopolitics and Language Orientations In the beginning… enrichment The use of two languages in education is not new. Mackey (1978: 2–3) describes how the 16,000 tablets unearthed in Aleppo, Syria, in 1977, indicated that bilingual schooling is at least 4,000 to 5,000 years old. The tablets were used to teach children to read and write in Eblaite (a language closely related to Akkadian, spoken in Ancient Mesopotamia and written in cuneiform script18) and Sumerian, which by then was a classical sacred language. After the people of the Mediterranean port of Ugarit developed a sequential alphabetic form of writing around 1500 BC, bilingual education spread throughout the ancient world. In the East, this sequential alphabet became the Aramaic alphabet which brought about the Persian, Indian, Arabic, and Hebrew scripts. In the West, it became the Greek alphabet, which gave rise to the modern Roman and Cyrillic alphabets (Mackey, 1978). E. Glyn Lewis (1977) has shown how in the West, from the second century onward, GreekLatin bilingual education was the way to educate boys from Roman aristocratic homes, who were expected to learn the language of the admired Hellenic civilization. Bilingualism was seen as a form of enrichment. Many schools have always practiced some form of bilingual education. It has always been common, for example, for the school text to be written in a language or a register different from that spoken by the school children. Translation of classical texts into vernaculars, one form of bilingual education, has always been central to the notion of schooling. And the reading of sacred texts in one language, with the study of commentaries written in another language, and discussion in yet another language, has also been a traditional way of schooling many ethnolinguistic groups. It has also been common for teachers, whether bilingual themselves or not, to teach in a language other than the one the children speak with each other. The purpose of schooling, and the bilingual practices observed, has been often related to the oscillation between the language practices of the home and community and those of the sacred and classical texts studied in school. Bilingual education has come into its own especially since the second half of the twentieth century, as schools have acknowledged the linguistic heterogeneity of children. But positionings and ideologies towards bilingualism in school have shifted in different contexts even at the same historical juncture. Ruiz (1984) has offered a framework with which to examine different language orientations: 1) language as a problem, 2) language as a right, and 3) language as a resource. We use the lens of language orientations to discuss the geopolitical forces that have promoted one or another perspective on bilingualism, and, therefore, on bilingual education (for a summary, see Table 1.2 below). As a problem It is important to situate the emergence in the twentieth century of bilingual education for the masses as a result of modernist development ideological frameworks that imagined, constructed, and narrated a “nation-state” into being in one language,19 and thus considered bilingualism to be a problem. Rooted in structuralfunctionalist concepts, modernization theory posits that the development of an independent, modern nation-state calls for urbanization, secularization, and the citizens’ transformation from a traditional to a modern disposition (Peet, 1999; Tsai, 2005). As a result of industrial and urban developments in the nineteenth century, languages became “modern;” that is, languages which symbolized national identity were standardized, codified, and used in schools, to the exclusion of others. Especially after World War I and II, nations within the constructed “nationstate,” whose languages did not coincide with the one elevated to privileged status, became cause for concern. This was the case, for example, of Latvians in the former Soviet Union who were forced to learn Russian and to give up Latvian; the nations and their languages were viewed as a problem. Bilingual education became an instrument, in some cases, of improving the teaching of the language chosen for modernization, and, in others, of linguistically assimilating all people. At the same time, in 1953, UNESCO, responding to the educational failure of children in colonial situations, issued an important resolution declaring that it was axiomatic that a child be taught to read in their home language. The resolution stated: On educational grounds we recommend that the use of the mother tongue be extended to as late a stage in education as possible. In particular, pupils should begin their schooling through the medium of the mother tongue, because they understand it best and because to begin their school life in the mother tongue will make the break between home and school as small as possible. Based on this principle, efforts to use the children’s language in education, especially in the early grades, gained strength, leading to the first official uses of what has since been termed “transitional bilingual education,” that is, the use of the child’s heritage language in the early grades and only until the child is fluent in the majority or colonial language. Despite the transitional and temporary aspects of this type of bilingual education, transitional bilingual education opened the door for schooling the masses, providing for the use of local languages, in addition to the other language, at times a colonial one, in the education of the young. Bilingual education was recognized around the world as being capable to do for the masses, and their children, what it had so well done for the elite – ensuring the acquisition of the languages of power through schooling while educating. But the potential of bilingual education for all children did not fully materialize because language difference, in this modernist conceptualization, was seen as a problem. As a right The worldwide economic downturn of the 1970s, and the ensuing widening of social inequities, led to an acknowledgment that modernization had failed and that decolonization did not necessarily translate into self-determination or sovereignty (Pepper, 1996; Tsai, 2005). The ability of a state’s bilingual education policies to transform citizens and societies, espoused by theories of modernization, was called into question (Fagerlind and Saha, 1989). The role of sociohistorical processes in shaping particular forms of bilingual education, and in particular the role of class, ethnicity, race, language, and gender in such shaping, was given increased attention (Skutnabb-Kangas and Phillipson, 1994; Tollefson, 1991, 2002; Wiley, 1996b, 1999; Wright, 2004). Some forms of bilingual education, especially transitional bilingual education, were increasingly criticized, as language minorities claimed their language rights and developed their own forms of bilingual schooling. Language minorities who had lost their home languages developed bilingual education programs that supported the revitalization of these languages. Other language minorities who felt threatened linguistically were able to set up programs to develop their home languages. In differentiating what came earlier from the way in which language-in-education policies were increasingly critically conceived, Ricento (2000: 208, our italics) says: “It seems that the key variable which separates the older, positivistic/technicist approaches from the newer critical/postmodern ones is agency, that is, the role(s) of individuals and collectivities in the processes of language use, attitudes, and ultimately policies.” Language difference was seen more and more as a right which had to be negotiated (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000), and language minorities started gaining agency in shaping their own language policies and practices in the education of their children. As a resource20 The end of the Cold War, the development of globalization, and the growing role of international organizations, have accelerated the movement of peoples and have challenged the sovereignty of states in the twenty-first century. With the increasing awareness of other languages, and the dominance, especially, of English, but also of Chinese, Spanish, and Arabic throughout the world (Graddol, 2006), bilingual education has taken yet another turn, now growing often without the direct intervention of the state, and including forms that respond to a much more dynamic language use. In supporting bilingual or multilingual education for all children in the world, UNESCO (2003: 17–18) emphasized the importance of both the global and the national and declared: the requirements of global and national participation, and the specific needs of particular, culturally and linguistically distinct communities can only be addressed by multilingual education. In regions where the language of the learner is not the official or national language of the country, bilingual and multilingual education can make mother tongue instruction possible while providing at the same time the acquisition of languages used in larger areas of the country and the world (our italics). UNESCO also proposes (2003: 30) three basic guiding principles, no longer simply focused on the mother tongue as it was in 1953, but on intercultural multilingual education as a resource for all: 1. Mother tongue instruction as a means of improving educational quality by building upon the knowledge and experience of the learners and teachers; 2. Bilingual and/or multilingual education at all levels of education as a means of promoting both social and gender equality and as a key element of linguistically diverse societies; 3. Language as an essential component of inter-cultural education in order to encourage understanding between different population groups and ensure respect for fundamental rights. Bilingual education is increasingly seen as a means through which children and youth can interact within their own ethnolinguistic community, as well as with others. This lens of complex linguistic interactions has been termed “linguistic ecology” (Haugen, 1972; Mühlhäusler, 1996).21 The challenge of bilingual schools in the twenty-first century is to prepare children to balance their own linguistic ecology (Fettes, 2003), enabling them to go freely back and forth in their overlapping languages and literacies. Mühlhäusler’s “ecological approach” (2000, 2002) calls for “a situation of equilibrium whereby languages automatically readjust themselves to fit into the environment, and perpetuate themselves through language contact, rather than isolation” (quoted in Tsai, 2005: 11). Children and educators have to be made aware of their ability to “self-regulate,” as languages take on complementary and overlapping roles in different domains of communication (Mühlhäusler, 2000, 2002), but without external language management by the state or even the school itself. Fettes has shown how today’s linguistic “geostrategies” which he defines as strategies designed to ensure the co-existence of particular languages or language types (2003: 44) are different from the “politico-strategies” of the twentieth century, in which one language was imposed on others in the state. This ecological approach to bilingualism has very different consequences for bilingual education. We will expand on this in Parts II and III of this book. One of the biggest changes in the globalized community of the twenty-first century is the blurring of territory that was clearly demarcated by language and culture. Although many territories had only given the appearance of being homogeneous, they provided a context, even if imagined, to enforce monolingual schooling. In the twenty-first century, however, we are aware of the linguistic complexity of the world in which monolingual schooling seems utterly inappropriate. Language differences are seen as a resource, and bilingual education, in all its complexity and forms, seems to be the only way to educate as the world moves forward. Summary Table 1.2 provides an overview of the geopolitical changes that have occurred since the end of World War II and their impact on theoretical perspectives for studying language use, as well as language orientations. Table 1.2 Sociohistorical and Sociolinguistic Orientations and Bilingualism22 Conclusion It is the goal of this book to show how the theories and practices of bilingual education, and the underpinnings that inform it, have grown and developed. From a monoglossic view of bilingual education as a bicycle with two balanced wheels, we propose a bilingual education that is more like an allterrain vehicle in its heteroglossic possibilities. This book tells the story of that development. It is also the purpose of this book to offer a critical reading of the current conversations (or lack of them) around bilingual education and multilingualism, and to imagine and construct a paradigm of bilingualism that is not always linear and that reflects the linguistic fluidity present in the discourse of the twenty-first century (this concept will receive more attention in Chapter 3). In this chapter we distinguished stages which roughly correspond to the three orientations of language-in-education planning that Ruiz (1984) has identified language as problem, language as right, and language as resource. But we demonstrated how the three conceptions and the different kinds of bilingual education types that reflect these orientations co-exist in the twentyfirst century, depending on the wishes of peoples and societies, as well as their histories and needs. It is precisely because (depending on the angle from which we look) bilingual education is seen as a problem, as a right, or as a resource, that we have decided to refer to the enterprise as bilingual education. Adopting more complex, more fluid terms to refer to the educational enterprise that we study here under the rubric of bilingual education would fail to acknowledge different societal realities. We believe that monolingual education is no longer adequate in the twenty-first century, and that every society needs some form of bilingual education. Our view of bilingual education is complex, like the banyan tree, allowing for growth in different directions at the same time and grounded in the diverse social realities from which it emerges. Just as bilingualism gives speakers choice, bilingual education gives school systems more choice, for there are many alternatives. Before we turn to the education element of bilingual education in Parts III and IV, we pay some attention to the language and bilingual elements in Part II of this book. Parts II, III, and IV are interrelated. Part II examines languages and bilingualism as individual and societal phenomena, within a sociocultural framework that pays attention to how bilingualism develops in different social and cultural contexts. Part III presents program types and variables in bilingual education, as well as policies that are related to the different understandings of bilingualism developed in Part II. Finally, Part IV looks at practices, especially language arrangement, pedagogies, and assessments, which are related to the different understandings held by individuals, communities, and states about bilingualism and bilingual education. Although Part IV will be more pertinent for classroom teachers, Part III for school systems and societies, and Part II for scholars of bilingualism, it would be useful to read all parts in sequence. Understanding the nature and purpose of language and bilingualism, and the bilingual education options available, is important in order to develop adequate pedagogies and practices. Questions for Reflection 1. What is bilingual education? How does it differ from language education? 2. Explain the difference between the bicycle and the all-terrain vehicle in thinking about bilingualism. 3. What is the relevance of the image of the banyan tree to this treatment of bilingual education? 4. What are some of the reasons why the term “bilingual education” has become contested, and why have we adopted it in this book? 5. What are some possible benefits of bilingual education? Who are the potential beneficiaries? 6. What is the difference in viewing language as a problem, as a right, and as a resource, and how has this impacted on the development of bilingual education? Further Reading Baker, C. (2006). Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, UK. Fourth edn. Baker, C., and Prys Jones, S. (1998). Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, UK. García, O., and Baker, C. (eds.) (2007). Bilingual Education: An Introductory Reader. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, UK. Part II Bilingualism and Education 2 Languaging and Education A Child’s Language Use: A Scenario Follow 14-year-old Tatyana as the computer is turned on. The web-based program Tatyana uses has a drop-down menu making it possible to switch between the Ukrainian in which her schooling is conducted, the Russian her father speaks to her, and the French she wants to learn. And when the computer’s microphone is turned on, Tatyana avidly listens to the different voices of the many games that are available, in Ukrainian, Russian, French, English, or any other language she fancies. Watch the screen as the child sends messages back and forth, with multiple signs, words, and visuals combining to communicate effectively with the many participants on the other end, sometimes nearby, but many other times far away. Now listen to Tatyana as she speaks to her other teenage sisters. The Ukrainian she uses is very different from that which she speaks with her mother or the Russian which she spea ks to her father. The language she hears on television and radio depends on who in the home is holding the remote control. Different channels often bring other languages, other varieties, as the characters change from professional to working-class, from rich to poor, from adults to children, and as programs originate in different geographical areas for specific populations. Now enter Tatyana’s school, but stop at the playground. There you see children of the same language-background interacting, sometimes going back and forth from language practices of play and friendship to those of schoolwork. Other times, children of different language backgrounds are together – playing, talking, engaging in language practices as they relate to their peers. Then walk into a classroom. Tatyana, who was chatting comfortably with many friends in the playground, is now sitting quietly at a desk. Sometimes, the teacher calls for group work and Tatyana is asked to complete a task with classmates. But the task is directed, the language is controlled, and only “accountable talk”1 on the subject of the lesson and in the standard language of instruction at the particular time is allowed by the teacher. If Tatyana is lucky, she is in a bilingual classroom, but even there she’s not allowed to use her multiple language practices to complete school tasks, to communicate with others, to think clearly, to show the understandings acquired, the knowledge internalized. The teacher carefully controls the language that is to be used during instruction. Assessment is done only using paper and pencil tasks, and often just in the dominant school language. Even when technology supports assessment, the academic tasks usually require only written language, devoid of sounds, of visuals, of other signs and language practices that may be in the child’s linguistic repertoire. The teacher’s talk is often very different from that of the children. And the discourse used in the classroom is very different from the authentic, multiple communication that takes place in the children’s home and in informal settings. Even teachers who pride themselves on using an innovative pedagogy fall prey at times to the Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) sequence (also referred to as IRE: Initiation-Response-Evaluation) that has been identified in the literature (Cazden, 1988; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975) as common in classroom discourse, with the teacher questioning, the student responding, and the teacher evaluating and giving feedback. Overview In this chapter, we will discuss: language constructions; languaging in different contexts. Introduction Before we examine the concept of bilingualism that underlies all understandings of bilingual education in Chapters 3 and 4, it is important to think about language itself, because language is both the medium through which school subjects are taught and is also an important subject studied in school. Bilingual education often involves educating in languages of unequal positions and power, so it is important first to discuss how certain languages have come to have the powerful role that they have today. Educators and scholars of bilingual education also need to be aware of the purposes for the imposition of certain language codes, and especially the standard academic language. Juxtaposing these notions with the fluid ways in which languages are used in the twenty-first century, what we will here call “languaging,” allows us to understand the changes that we must make conceptually in our thinking about language to support the children’s language practices in classrooms. In this chapter, we focus on the complex role that bilingual schools play regarding language. Whereas all schools, even monolingual ones, must negotiate the standard language that they use and promote, and the intricate language practices of students, it is in bilingual schools that this complexity comes to the fore. In bilingual schools the heterogeneity of language practices involving two or more languages is much more intricate than the two standard languages in isolation that schools use and promote. It is precisely this tension between the heteroglossic language practices of emergent bilingual2 and bilingual students, and the standard language promoted in school, that makes bilingual education such a fertile ground for thinking about language. It is the task of any bilingual school to build on this tension, as it acknowledges and utilizes the child’s complex linguistic practices to ensure that the use of two or more standard languages are incorporated into the child’s linguistic repertoire. Language Constructions Constructing language Makoni and Pennycook (2007) have proposed that our present conception of language was originally constructed by states that wanted to consolidate political power, and in so doing established language academies, encouraged the preparation of grammars, dictionaries, and treatises to strengthen and standardize languages, and encouraged the enumeration of languages in ways that masked their differences or similarities.3 With regard to language academies, among the first was the Accademia della Crusca, founded in Florence in 1572 to uphold the Tuscan dialect of Dante and Petrarch. In 1635 Cardinal Richelieu founded the Académie Française to promote clarity, simplicity, and good taste in French. And in 1713, the Real Academia Española was established in Spain with its motto of “limpia, fija y da esplendor” (cleans, stabilizes, and gives splendor), championing Spanish (Castilian4) and keeping it uncontaminated. Throughout the eighteenth century, other language academies flourished in Europe, and Arabic bodies were established in several countries, including Syria, Iraq, Egypt, and Jordan. Academies in Damascus, Cairo, Baghdad, Amman and Rabat all work for their own interest in the standardization and spread of Arabic (Laroussi, 2003). Official and semi-official agencies in multilingual African and Asian countries are concerned with both language purification, as well as language selection. In Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore, where Malay is used, The Handbook for the Formation of Technical Terms was agreed upon in 1975. In contrast to these efforts to control language, there has never been an official English language academy. The major repository for standard English is in dictionaries, though there have been many individual guidebooks on usage (one of the more famous being Fowler’s Modern English Usage [1968, revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, Oxford, Oxford University Press]). In 1755, Samuel Johnson published his great dictionary, stabilizing English, but rejecting what he called linguistic “embalming.” In the United States, Noah Webster published his dictionary in 1827, removing “improprieties and vulgarisms,” but staying away from prescription. That the construction of language, as we know it today, is tied to political control is evident, for example, in the case of Spanish. The year of the encounter between the Old and the New World, 1492, is also the year of the conquest of the last Arab kingdom of the Iberian Peninsula in Granada and of the expulsion of Jews by the Catholic monarchs; it is also the year of publication of Elio Antonio de Nebrija’s grammar, the first grammar of a modern European language. Nebrija’s work explicitly links the standardization of language, through a grammar, to the consolidation of political power, as it claims: “siempre la lengua fue compañera del imperio” (language was always the companion of empire). The social construction of language was not simply limited to Europe. In Korea, for example, King Sejong invented Hangul, the phonemic alphabet organized into syllabic blocks in the fifteenth century. Hangul replaced the Chinese characters that had been used. In the case of colonized populations, “constructed” state languages were then “administratively assigned” to them (Makoni and Pennycook, 2007). Beyond states, there were missionaries and colonial officers who evangelized, converted, controlled, and administered colonized populations. Errington (2001) has shown how missionaries and colonial officers imposed these “invented” monolithic languages onto specific territories. For example, Batibo (2005) describes how the rivalry between two missionary organizations led to separate orthographies for two languages in Cameroon – Ewondo and Bulu – which are mutually intelligible. The same happened when missionaries developed different signing systems for schools for the Deaf in the African context (Miles, 2005). Mühlhäusler (2000: 38) has said that the “notion of ‘a language’ makes little sense in most traditional societies where people engage in multiple discursive practices among themselves.” Mühlhäusler (1996: 5) explains that “the identification of languages and their subsequent naming is far from being an act of objective description.” And speaking of the Pacific region, he continues: “The notion of ‘a language’ is one whose applicability to the Pacific region, and in fact most situations outside those found within modern European nation-states, is extremely limited” (1996: 7). Romaine concurs with Mühlhäusler when describing the complex language use in Papua New Guinea; she says (1994: 12): “the very concept of discrete languages is probably a European cultural artifact fostered by procedures such as literacy and standardization. Any attempt to count distinct languages will be an artifact of classificatory procedures rather than a reflection of communicative practices.” Regarding Africa, Samarin (1996) has referred to it as “a continent without languages.” In general, languages have been constituted separately “outside and above human beings” (Yngve 1996: 28) and have little relationship to the ways in which people use language, their discursive practices, or what Yngve also calls their “languaging.” Languaging, as Shohamy (2006b) says, refers to language practices of people. Languages are socially constructed – this is the reason why there is no consensus on the number of languages in the world. According to Ethnologue, collected by SIL International, a Christian-faith-based language-preservation society, there are 40,000 names for different languages, although the society counts close to 7,000 languages (Grimes, 2000). Ethnologue (Gordon, 2005: no pag.) again notes that “the definition of language one chooses depends on the purpose one has in identifying a language.” Language is truly a social notion that cannot be defined without reference to its speakers and the context in which it is used (Heller, 2007). It is also true, however, that language is a psychological and grammatical notion. For example, the mental grammars of person A and person B may be more similar to the grammars of person A and person C, although whether A and B end up speaking the same language is a sociopolitical decision. It is important then to recognize that, despite the fact that language has a psychological and linguistic component, it is the social context in which it is used, and the wishes and power of its speakers, that determines its role – especially in schools. The state It is common practice to associate a state with a single language. For example, it is generally thought that French is spoken in France whereas Spanish is used in Spain; and that Danish Sign Language is used in Denmark, whereas Costa Rican Sign Language is used in Costa Rica. However, with multilingualism being the norm in many countries, such an association has been called into question. Since the publication of Anderson’s influential Imagined Communities (1983), it has been widely accepted that nation-states were imagined and narrated into being. A nation-state is a mental construct made up of affinities such as language with imagined people. Anderson (1983: 15) explains that these nation-states are imagined communities because “the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow members, meet them or even hear of them, yet in the mind of each lives the image of their communion.” But although these nation-states unite “imagined” communities, they often divide “real” communities that share language and culture. Perhaps the most obvious example here is that of African nations. At the Berlin Conference of 1885, political boundaries were drawn at right angles to the coastline, and neither linguistic areas nor former kingdoms were considered. That nation-states are constructed is confirmed by the fact that in the beginning of the twentieth century there were only sixty sovereign states. At the end of World War II there were seventy-four states; today there are approximately 200, with the number changing frequently. The constructions continue. The linguistic consequences of the construction of nation-states have been great. Few states have ever been monolingual in their makeup, and even today there are very few countries in the world that can be considered linguistically homogeneous (see Lewis, 1981). Iceland and possibly Korea are probably the only clear-cut cases where the entire autochthonous population uses one and the same language for the majority of its social interaction. The rest of the world, whether countries in the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe, or Oceania, and without taking into account recent immigration patterns, have almost never been inhabited by people who share one common language. And yet, the predominant ideologytends to associate monolingualism with the norm, whereby the dominance of one language within the borders of a political entity is considered as more natural, more desirable, more efficient, and more productive for the sake of cohesion than reality warrants. In 1967, Mackey wrote that “bilingualism, far from being exceptional, is a problem which affects the majority of the world population” (11; our italics; an unfortunate way of presenting the issues involved). In the early 1980s Grosjean (1982: vii) estimated that at least half the world’s population was bilingual, since there were thirty times as many languages as there were countries. In 2000, Grimes listed 6,809 languages in over 200 countries. Mackey (2003) has pointed out that, in the past, a language used to be the property of its users, indicated by the name itself; for example, lingua anglica, lingua romana rustica. But with the rise of the state, language became associated with the land in which it was spoken. Less than 25 percent of the world’s 200 or so countries recognize two or more official languages (Tucker, 1998). This has important consequences for education, since it turns out that although there are more bilingual and multilingual individuals in the world than monolinguals, and more languages than states, the fact that education takes place in the de jure or de facto5 official language means that most children in the world are educated in a language other than that of the home. Although nation-states may have been mental and imagined constructs, its consequences are not imaginary for minoritized language communities within it. Today, as we discuss further in the next section, globalization and the mobility of populations has made us conscious of the fact that specific languages do not belong to territories or states. Rather, languages belong to the people who speak them, who are in different geographical spaces. But this creates challenges to political states that organize educational systems and that increasingly have to educate children who do not speak the school language at home. Globalization The norms in the organization of work and methods of production brought about by new communication technology and globalization have greatly impacted languaging practices in the twenty-first century (Maurais and Morris, 2003; New London Group, 2000). Fettes (2003: 37) summarizes the geopolitical and technology changes and their effect on language communities: National economies have become far more integrated in the global economy; money and workers have become much more mobile; the pace of technological change has accelerated to an unbelievable extent; and the explosive growth of communication and information networks is on the verge of “annihilating space.” Increasingly, every language community must become aware of its position in a “dynamic world system of languages” characterized by vast and expanding differences in status and use. In the twenty-first century, we have witnessed the creation of new economic trading blocs and new socioeconomic and sociopolitical organizations that have affected how language is used – for example, the European Union, Mercosur (South American Common Market or Mercado del Sur, see Hamel, 2003), the North American Free Trade Area and the World Trade Organization, and the controls exercised by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The European Union, a transnational democracy, is poised to replace old models of democracy in the nation-state. There has been a redrawing of political states along ethnic and linguistic lines in Eastern Europe. The linguistic diversity of Africa, Asia, and even Latin America has become well recognized.6 These sociopolitical and socioeconomic changes have also resulted in dramatic population shifts. For example, between 1960 and 2000, the total number of international migrants doubled to 175 million, representing nearly 3 percent of the world’s population (Graddol, 2006: 28). And this immigration is characterized by transnationalism; that is, the ability to go back and forth to the country of origin, aided by improved transportation and technology (Castles, 2000). Migrant workers and immigrants are not the only ones who move back and forth. Refugees and asylum seekers, business and expatriate workers, international students, and even tourists, all contribute to population movement making bilingualism important in the twenty-first century. At present, there are 32.8 million refugees and internally displaced persons, the result of conflicts over scarce resources and marginalization. Tourism accounted for 763 million international travelers in 2004, and three quarters of those tourists were from non-English speaking countries traveling to countries where English was not spoken (Graddol, 2006: 29). It has been estimated that between 2 and 3 million students travel to another country to study each year. The United States and the United Kingdom account for over a third of all international students in the world (Graddol, 2006: 76), but increasingly there are other countries involved. China, for example, receives students from Korea and Japan. All these population movements bring about changes in language use, and amplify the presence of bilingualism, as people need to communicate or access information outside their primary language group. Inexpensive communication technology in this globalized world has also made possible the outsourcing of services to countries with cheaper labor costs, with bilingualism as an important resource. Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), available to consumers at no cost, and mobile phones with their capacity for Short Text Messages (SMS or Short Message Service), make it possible for many more people to communicate across national borders, not only in different languages, but using different modalities, with language bound up with visual, audio, and spatial semiotic systems. The ability to download multimedia files through podcasting is enabling many to share their own languages, and others to learn them on their own without the help of schools or other intermediaries. The internet has also increased our contact with other languages and bilingualism. Although English continues to be used most often on the web (68% in 2000, according to Catalan ISP VilaWeb [cited in Graddol, 2006: 44]), this figure is declining. Table 2.1 displays the top ten languages used in the web; that is, the number of internet users by language: Between 2000 and 2008, the greatest language growth on the internet was experienced by Arabic (2,062%), followed by Portuguese (668%), Chinese (622%), and then French (452%). English experienced only a 201 percent growth in the last decade (Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2008). According to an analysis made in Ireland about the demand and supply of foreign language skills in the enterprise sector (Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, 2005), approximately 50 percent of users worldwide choose a language other than English to access the Google web-search utility (based on data sourced from Google Inc.; www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.xhtml, August 2004). And new software has made the availability of different scripts easier. Many websites are using multilingual strategies, allowing consumers and users to access information in the language they prefer. Machine translation is readily available. There are even websites that allow internet users to communicate with each other in sign languages. And Internet programs such as Camfrog, MSN Messenger or Skype allow Deaf people to reach out beyond national boundaries and see different sign languages in use. For the Deaf community, the improvement in cochlear implant technology has changed the boundaries of the community, and sign language has had to be renegotiated as important in the education of the Deaf. Table 2.1 Internet World Users by Language Language Millions of Users % Represented English 427 30% Chinese 233 17% Spanish 122 9% Japanese 94 7% French 67 5% German 63 4% Arabic 60 4% Portuguese 58 4% Korean 35 2% Italian 34 2% Rest of languages 213 15% Miniwatts Marketing Group, 2008 Although English is widespread in the media, and in news in particular, with BBC and CNN predominating, other languages are used more and more. Since the establishment of Al Jazeera in Qatar in 1996, Arabic has had an important international presence in the news media. In 2003, Al Arabiya was launched from Dubai, with Saudi backing. And in 2005, Telesur started its transmission in Spanish from Caracas. In Canada, on September 1, 1999, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), with programming relevant to First Nations and Indigenous communities around the world, was launched. Approximately 30 percent of all programming is in Indigenous languages.7 With the advent of DVDs, viewers have options of languages or subtitles, using this as a way to develop bilingual proficiency. Secondary Audio Programming (SAP), available on television sets since 1990, enables one to see a television program that is close-captioned; that is, has text that accompanies the video, or is in different languages. Whereas the closecaptioning is especially useful for the Deaf community,8 the language option of SAP allows for a bilingual television experience. For example, starting fall 2005, all prime-time television shows on the second largest U.S. television network, ABC, are available in SAP dubbed in Spanish or closecaptioned. This not only makes it possible for U.S. Latinos who prefer Spanish to watch these programs, but also for Anglophones to improve their Spanish. In addition, subtitles allow U.S. Latino viewers to strengthen their English skills, while the dubbing of television programs develops their formal Spanish. An American woman married to a Deaf Italian and living in Rome watches movies on DVD with English dialogue and Italian subtitles. But sometimes, languages are switched so that the American woman can hear Italian and the Italian man can practice his reading of English print (Cole, personal communication, November 26, 2006). In Japan, TVs and VCRs have a button similar to the SAP button which allows the viewer to turn off the Japanese dubbing and listen to the program in its original language (Rob Werner, personal communication, October 12, 2006). It is then possible to watch Yankee games in English, Al Jazeera in Arabic, or the network news channels of France, Spain, Korea, and others, all in their original languages. Because of improved technology and better public funding for services, people who are Deaf can communicate with hearing people over the internet, video relaying,9 and other forms of written communication. A person may use American sign language and borrow signs from other sign languages during a single conversation, and another person may use a webcam to sign with another viewer and, at the same time, send instant messages in a written language to that viewer (Cole, written communication, January 3, 2007). The technologies of the twenty-first century have enabled discursive constructions that function simultaneously in space and time. What is different today from the ways in which people languaged in the nineteenth and twentieth century is that we can simultaneously and collaboratively engage in many different language practices at the same time, as happens in electronic instant messaging and chatting. And in so doing, there is a measure of “agency” that did not exist prior to the technological revolution. That is, speakers are now free to choose a broader range of language practices than those offered by the immediate community and the school; and they can use them in ways that are not reflected in more institutionalized language practices of schools and official publications. Lingua francas are one way in which communication across the state borders has been achieved. Lingua francas are often either numerically powerful languages such as Arabic, Chinese, English, or Spanish, or a planned international language such as Esperanto. Esperanto, an artificially constructed language, was invented by L.L. Zamenhof at the end of the nineteenth century to serve as a second language, in order to foster international peace and understanding. An international sign system for Deaf language users has also been developed. None of these artificial lingua francas has been completely successful. English, Graddol (2006) tells us, is a growing lingua franca, especially in Asia (see Tsui and Tollefson, 2007). In many countries the learning of English is considered a basic skill, to be taught in school alongside Math and Literacy. And yet English does not enjoy complete hegemony in the world. Mandarin is also growing as a lingua franca. And there are other languages experiencing growth. In North Africa and West Africa, Arabic is growing much more quickly than English. In the United States, Spanish competes with English. Global English may be on the rise, but so is global Chinese, global Arabic, and global Spanish. As a first language, English is being challenged by both Spanish and Hindi-Urdu, and is said to be falling from second to fourth place (Chinese holds the first place). Demographically, Arabic is growing faster than any other world language (Graddol, 2006). That the linguistic flow, even in the media, is not now unidirectional or favoring English has been much discussed by Graddol (2006). Graddol gives some interesting examples. In East Asia, Chinese and Japanese viewers are more interested in soap operas from Korea than those from the United States, and Japanese Manga comics are more important than English comics. The influence of Bollywood, the Hindilanguage film industry in India, competes with Hollywood in all of Asia. And Spanish telenovelas (soap operas) are increasingly seen by North American housewives. In fact, the Spanishlanguage Univisión, the fifth largest television station in the U.S., has a growing Anglophone viewing audience. In terms of second-language users, Putonghua (Mandarin) holds first place, and is emerging as extremely important in other East Asian countries, such as South Korea. The first Confucius Institute dedicated to teaching Putonghua opened in Seoul, South Korea, in November 2004, and others have opened in the United Kingdom, the United States, Africa, Australia, and Continental Europe. Table 2.2 displays the ten written languages which have the most second-language users (expressed in millions). We should end this section on globalization by pointing out the persistent importance of the local (Canagarajah, 1999, 2005a), of what Appadurai (1996) calls “globalization from below.” Recently, the term “glocalization” has been coined to note the presence of the local in the global and vice versa.10 At a 1997 conference on “Globalization and Indigenous Culture,” Roland Robertson defined glocalization as “the simultaneity – the co-presence – of both universalizing and particularizing tendencies.” As national identities have become fragmented through the weakening of the nationstate construction, the relationship between language and identity is more relevant today than ever (Canagarajah, 2005b). Responding to scholars and critics who view the process of globalization as making ethnicity and language differences unnecessary, Fishman (2001: 460) notes: Table 2.2 Second-Language Users 1 Mandarin 1,052 2 English 508 3 Hindi 487 4 Spanish 417 5 Russian 277 6 Bengali 211 7 Portuguese 191 =8 German 128 =8 French 128 10 Japanese 126 From: Figure 1.37, Graddol, 2006, based on Ostler, 2005 Some of the very processes of globalization and post-modernism that were supposed to be most deleterious to purportedly “parochial” identities have actually contributed most to their re-emergence as “part-identities.” The increasing ubiquity of the civil state, of civil nationalism and, therefore, of a shared supra-ethnic civil nationalism as part of the identity constellation of all citizens, has resulted in more rather than less recognition of multiculturalism at the institutional level and a more widespread implementation of local ethnicity as a counterbalance to civil nationalism at the level of organized part-identity. Language plays a vital role in today’s globalized world, and it is more important than ever in education. Languaging Languaging and languages Close your eyes and listen with your “inner ear” as Patricia Carini (2000) has taught us to do, to children talking to each other in a classroom, in a playground. Or open your eyes and see Deaf school children signing. Bring to your mind’s eye the words of characters in a movie, a television show, a play, or the words of Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Proust on a page, or even those of a person you love, or of the email you have just exchanged. Or hear the words of a prayer uttered in a Native American language. People language for many purposes. They language for expression, for interaction, and to express reference (Ager, 2001). But language practices can also be turned into something about which people, communities, and states have opinions a...
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