Aims of the module

• To provide an overview of the types of bilingual education developed in different national and regional contexts

• To consider the discourses about linguistic and cultural difference underpinning different types of bilingual education

• To examine the impact of bilingual education policy on patterns of communication in schools and classrooms;

• To show how the educational experience of individual bilinguals is embedded in and shaped by wider policy shifts.

Brief description
This module considers the 'what', 'why' and 'how' of bilingual education. The 'what' question examines educational responses to linguisitic and cultural diversity in different national and regional contexts. The 'why' question looks at the role of education in processes of social reproduction in multilingual settings, and examines the ways the construction of 'legitimate languages' and linguistic and cultural values are shaped. The 'how' question focuses on the routines and communicative practices of day to day life in bilingual and multilingual schools and classrooms.

Syllabus
The lectures will be based on the following topics:

• the development of educational responses to linguistic and cultural difference in different national and regional educational systems
• local debates over the implementation and development of different forms of educational provision for bilingual learners:
• second language teaching (ESL),
• transitional bilingual education,
• maintenance programmes,
• immersion education,
• teaching through the medium of an indigenous minority language or through a former colonial language.
• connections across specific political and historical locations, identifying commonalities and differences in language policies and forms of educational provision;
• the ways in which language policy-making is bound up with the power relations between ethnolinguistic groups (at national and regional levels);
• the role of education in the construction of legitimacy and the shaping of linguistic and cultural values;
• the views of bilingualism and of literacy which underpin a good deal of educational practice in bilingual and multilingual settings;
• the routines and communicative practices of day to day life in bilingual and multilingual schools and classrooms
• the ways in teachers and learners negotiate classroom relationships in two (or more) languages;
• the ways in which teachers and learners draw on the languages available to them in co-constructing knowledge, in talking about monolingual and/or bilingual texts and in negotiating different cultural worlds.

The tutorials / seminars will provide opportunities for students to further explore and discuss themes which are introduced in the lectures.