Forging Multilingual Spaces: Integrated Perspectives on Majority and Minority Bilingual Education - Rilegato

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 1847690769 ISBN 13: 9781847690760

Casa editrice: Multilingual Matters Ltd, 2008

Riassunto

This book offers a new perspective for research in the field of bilingual education by proposing an integrated approach to the study of bilingualism in minority and majority settings. Programmes for indigenous groups, for national minorities and for migrants are analysed together with programmes aimed at dominant language groups, by well-known scholars from eight different countries in Europe and the Americas. Each contribution seeks to go beyond the traditional dichotomy between policy, practice and research into bilingual education programmes for majority language speakers, and modalities offered for minority language speakers. Thus, the book argues for the construction of a shared discourse for research into bilingualism and bilingual education and for the adoption of an ecological perspective on language education.

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Informazioni sugli autori

Christine Hélot is a professor of English and a teacher educator at the University of Strasbourg in France (Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres d’Alsace). She is the coordinator of a research programme on plurilingualism, intercultural education, and language learning.

Anne-Marie de Mejía works in the Centre for Research and Development in Education at Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. She has a Ph. D in Linguistics in the area of Bilingual Education. Her research interests include bilingual classroom interaction, process of teacher empowerment and bilingual teacher development.

Christine Hélot is a professor of English and a teacher educator at the University of Strasbourg in France (Institut Universitaire de Formation des Maîtres d'Alsace). She is the coordinator of a research programme on plurilingualism, intercultural education, and language learning.Anne-Marie de Mejía works in the Centre for Research and Development in Education at Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. She has a Ph. D in Linguistics in the area of Bilingual Education. Her research interests include bilingual classroom interaction, process of teacher empowerment and bilingual teacher development.

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Forging Multilingual Spaces

Integrated Perspectives on Majority and Minority Bilingual Education

By Christine Hélot, Anne-Marie de Mejia

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2008 Christine Helot, Anne-Marie de Mejia and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84769-076-0

Contents

The Contributors, vii, 
1 Introduction Christine Helot and Anne-Marie de Mejia, 1, 
Part 1: The Americas, 
2 Teaching Spanish and Spanish in Teaching in the USA: Integrating Bilingual Perspectives Ofelia García, 31, 
3 Plurilingual Latin America: Indigenous Languages, Immigrant Languages, Foreign Languages – Towards an Integrated Policy of Language and Education Rainer Enrique Hamel, 58, 
4 Points of Contact or Separate Paths: A Vision of Bilingual Education in Colombia Anne-Marie de Mejia and Maria Emilia Montes Rodriguez, 109, 
5 Staff Profiles in Minority and Prestigious Bilingual Education Contexts in Argentina Cristina Banfi and Silvia Rettaroli, 140, 
Part 2: Europe, 
6 The National Languages Strategy in the UK: Are Minority Languages Still on the Margins? Jim Anderson, Charmian Kenner and Eve Gregory, 183, 
7 Bilingual Education in France: School Policies Versus Home Practices Christine Helot, 203, 
8 Languages and Language Learning in Catalan Schools: From the Bilingual to the Multilingual Challenge Cristina Escobar Urmeneta and Virginia Unamuno, 228, 
9 Educating for Participation in a Bilingual or a Multilingual Society? Challenging the Power Balance between English and Irish (Gaelic) and Other Minority Languages in Ireland Muiris O Laoire, 256, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Different Spaces – Different Languages. Integrated Perspectives on Bilingual Education in Majority and Minority Settings

CHRISTINE HÉLOT and ANNE-MARIE DE MEJÍA

In many parts of the world there exists a traditional divide between policy, practice and research into bilingualism and bilingual education programmes for majority language speakers, and modalities offered for minority language speakers. As a result, policymakers, teachers and researchers who are involved with bilingual programmes in international languages often have little contact with researchers and practitioners who are concerned with bilingual education programmes in minority communities. This separation leads to a necessarily limited view of the progress of research on bilingualism and bilingual education, and means that linguistic and pedagogical insights and perceptions from each tradition are often not available to inform future general developments in the field.

Furthermore, while bilingualism in internationally prestigious languages is generally considered worthy of investment of considerable sums of money, as it provides access to a highly 'visible', socially accepted form of bilingualism, leading to the possibility of employment in the global marketplace, bilingualism in minority languages leads, in many cases, to an 'invisible' form of bilingualism in which the native language is undervalued and associated with underdevelopment, poverty and backwardness. Thus, on the one hand, bilingualism may well bring advantages, prestige and power (de Mejía, 2002), but on the other, it can give rise to problems and disadvantages, 'disempowering' individuals who happen to speak languages considered of limited value in the global marketplace (Cummins, 2000). This double vision of bilingualism has been referred to by Barriga Villanueva (2007: 14) as a phenomenon of 'claroscuros'. She characterises the two sides of bilingualism in the following manner, 'the luminous side is related to a high level of culture, of personal prestige ...; the dark side ... is that which is related to the power and domination of a hegemonic language'.

The discourse commonly used to refer to bilingual education generally reinforces these types of dichotomies. As Hornberger (1989: 273, 2003a) recognises in her postulation of a continua model of biliteracy, rather than concern ourselves with 'polar opposites, ... we need to take account of all dimensions represented by the continua'. In other words, we need to go beyond these dichotomies so that we can represent the nature of bilingualism and multilingualism more appropriately in relation to the complex, shifting realities of the world today. Ofelia García (2005: personal communication) acknowledges, with regard to the situation in the USA, 'The old paradigms of bilingual education do not work anymore. Bilingual situations today are fluid.' The implication is that if we continue to use a naturalised discourse which focuses on dichotomies, barriers will continue to exist and the lack of a shared discourse will be exploited to create division, so that bilingualism in minority languages will continue to be seen as a disadvantage.

In a colloquium organised on this topic at the Fifth International Symposium on Bilingualism in Barcelona in 2005, participants from eight different countries were asked to rethink bilingual education in a way which broke away from dichotomous oppositions, and to critically examine some of the more recent policies and practices in relation to the development of bi/multilingualism in schools. While the main aim of the colloquium was to confront reflections on how to bridge the gap between elite and minority bilingualism, another objective was to gather together researchers who have studied bilingual education from different points of view. Some researchers were more familiar with programmes for indigenous groups (Hamel), others with programmes for national minority groups (O'Laoire, Escoba Urmeneta and Unamuno), others with programmes for migrant minority groups (Anderson, Kenner, Gregory and García) and others again with programmes for dominant language groups (Hélot, de Mejía, Montes Rodríguez, Banfi and Rettaroli).

In the Barcelona colloquium there was testimony to the success of teacher initiatives at grassroots level in countries such as the USA, Ireland, France and England; however, responses at government level were seen as less encouraging. Participants acknowledged the need for the development of more powerful strategies at macro level and highlighted the responsibility of academics in promoting change. There was also a call for the creation of spaces in school programmes, which would allow for bilingual children's voices to be heard in a collaborative learning situation, rather than existing in isolation, in separate streams or in 'pull-out' situations. Charmian Kenner (2005, personal communication) suggested that, 'the needs of L1 and L2 speakers should be met in the same shared space', in a sensitive manner. Both Dual Language Programmes and Language Awareness Programmes were seen as possible ways forward for developing this kind of 'meeting-place' of different languages and cultures. Thus, the possibility of integrating a language awareness component into bilingual education professional development courses was proposed as a means of helping bilingual teachers come to terms with the challenges of recognising and promoting language and cultural diversity in the classroom. Indeed, it should be acknowledged that today pupils attending bilingual education programmes may speak a different language from the two languages used to learn in school. It is somewhat ironic that bilingual education should exclude the home languages of some pupils in the same way as monolingual education does. This implies that bilingual educators need to rethink their attitudes and representations towards languages and move from a strictly bilingual framework to a multilingual one.

It should be stressed that the editors of this book do not wish to deny the importance of context in analysing bilingual or multilingual education. Our aim is, in fact, to find new ways of revisiting bilingual education typologies and, hopefully, to redirect bi/multilingual education policy. While it is clear for the authors in this book that the present linguistic and cultural diversity of our classrooms questions existing bilingual programmes, the ways in which the relationships between minority and majority languages are treated in national policies (or supranational policies at the European level) can inform researchers looking for new models of language education; models which focus on practices that highlight the value of bi/multilingualism in any language and which take into account the social practices of languages, and not just national education agendas. In other words, as we stated initially, what we want to address in this book is the traditional divide which exists in most countries between language education for the monolingual majority in dominant languages and compensatory education in the national language for the bilingual minorities. We also wish to argue for the recognition of a necessary complementarity between foreign language education and the education of language minority students, based on the principle of integration across linguistic communities.

Beyond the contextual and structural characteristics of bilingual education developed in the countries represented in this book, we wish to understand the ways in which all these programmes are being questioned by researchers and practitioners who are redefining the goals of language education (and bilingual education) in order to adapt to the growing linguistic and cultural diversity of classrooms and pupils. While Fishman (1976, 1977, 1982) believed in the notion of 'enrichment' bilingual education as a model which offers the greatest potential benefit, not only to language minority speakers but to the national society as a whole, and consequently that it should be extended beyond its elitist origin from the majority group to the minority group, we would argue today that minority language settings can also teach us a lot about language learning in majority contexts. As researchers in the field of language biographies have shown, multilingual students have a more developed awareness of the relationship between language and identity and language and power. They also show greater metalinguistic resources when learning languages in formal contexts. In other words, as García et al. (2006: 10) explains, 'immigrants, exiles, refugees and other "transnationals" have resources, namely their ability to have "double vision", or to be "in the middle", so as to be able to have a critical orientation towards the many places in which they have lived'. Thus, an integrated vision of bilingual education does not mean applying the same goals and programmes to minority students as to majority students, but educating minority and majority students together, as in the Dual Language Immersion schools in the USA or the peace schools in Israel (www.handinhand.org.il).

Looking at the eight countries described in this book, it is clear that within each sociolinguistic setting, different languages are allocated different spaces in the respective curricula (or no space at all). They are taught according to different modalities, assigned more or less time, more or less space, more or less value. Thus, most education systems reflect the divided vision prevalent in society that some languages are worth more than others. Schools everywhere reflect societal characteristics, societal needs, societal views and, above all, societal power constellations. Programmes that pose little threat to the established power structure are the ones that generally get implemented in schools, yet reflective practitioners and researchers are continually challenging institutional racism in schools and devising potentially empowering pedagogical alternatives (Cummins, 2000).

The contributors to this volume give examples of such programmes, while at the same time focusing on the inter-relationships between language and the wider social and political environment, contesting traditional relations of power. For example, some of the authors point to the gap between bilingualism developed in the home context and bilingualism developed at school and how educational language policies deny the former and invest heavily in the latter. This is another type of dichotomy which needs to be reframed conceptually and envisaged as a continuum, rather than being examined in isolation. It needs to be understood within a framework where all dimensions of bilingualism are linked to one another. Due to the fact that some home bilingualism is supported in school and some is not, depending on the status of the language concerned, Hornberger and Skilton Sylvester's continua of biliteracy model (2003) is particularly useful in this respect, because it was developed within an ecological perspective which makes transparent the ideologies that pervades language policies and language choice. As Heller and Martin Jones (2002: 30 quoted by Creese & Martin, 2003: 164) point out, an ecological approach makes clear 'what kinds of language practices are valued and considered good, normal, appropriate or correct in particular classrooms and schools, and who are likely to be the winners or losers in the ideological orientations'.

What we would like to show in this book is how it is possible to approach language education from a more ecological point of view, that is to say where all languages are envisaged as learning resources for those who speak them, as well as for the monolingual majorities. Thus, we contend that any language should be seen as a linguistic and cultural resource to learn another language, including the school language, helping to promote mutual understanding and opening to others. We agree with Ruiz (1984) and Hornberger (1991: 226) who maintain that, 'The primary identifying characteristics for enrichment bilingual education is that the program structure incorporates a recognition that the minority language is not only a right of its speakers but a potential resource for majority language speakers'.

Most of the papers in this collection are co-authored because the researchers needed to collaborate with colleagues in order to be able to jointly examine the diverse forms of bilingual education in their own sociolinguistic and political context. They examine points of contact between minority and majority bilingual or multilingual provision in eight different national scenarios, discussing ways in which the unequal balance of power across different languages and literacies is either reinforced, or challenged by policymakers and educators, and examining reasons for this. The emphasis is on asking whether it is possible to find 'various modes of interplay' (Hélot, 2005: 5) between prestigious bilingualism and the bilingualism of minorities, and whether this approach can help to envisage new models of language education in school settings.

This volume is divided into two sections. The focus of the first section is entitled 'Bilingualism in the Americas' and includes discussion of the situation in one North American nation, the USA, and three Latin American countries: Colombia, Argentina and Mexico. The second section is concerned with the situation in Europe and includes contributions from France, Ireland, Catalonia and England.

Part 1: The Americas

Our characterisation of the situation of bilingual education in four national scenarios in the Americas is intended, on one hand, to complement the discussion of developments in Europe in Part 2 of this collection of papers. It is also a convenient label to group together countries, which although sociolinguistically diverse in nature, are marked by their differing relationships with the Spanish language at international and intranational level. Mexico, Colombia and Argentina all recognise Spanish either as their official language or as the first language of the majority of their population,1 while in the USA there are more than 30 million speakers of the language, according to the Census carried out in 2000 (Hamel, 2003).

However, it must also be recognised that this apparent homogeneity with respect to the Spanish language conceals a wide range of diversity. In the USA alone, the Hispanic (Latino) community form a,

very heterogeneous medley of races and nationalities (...) Latinos include native born US citizens (predominantly Chicanos – Mexican-American – and Nuyoricans – 'mainland' Puerto Ricans) and Latin American immigrants of all racial and national combinations. (Flores, 1993: 199)

Not only is the Latino community a diverse community, but there is also evidence of a highly complex linguistic situation with multiple varieties of Spanish spoken and the emergence of a language continuum with varying levels of proficiency and with distinctive characteristics, such as a tendency to replace the subjunctive and conditional forms with the indicative, due to the high degree of contact with English (Gutierrez & Fairclough, 2006).

However, in spite of this situation, traditionally the teaching of Spanish as a foreign language in the USA has been based on the teaching of a standard form of the language and the rejection of local varieties. Yet, as Gutierrez and Fairclough (2006: 174) argue, sociolinguistic studies of language heterogeneity have begun to challenge such concepts as 'the standard language', and thus, 'the goal should be for students to communicate both with Spanish speakers in the United States and around the world (so they) should also (be) able to communicate using the predominant local or regional vernacular norms'.

Even though Spanish is challenging English in certain parts of the USA where a number of towns have predominantly Spanish-speaking populations (Graddol, 2006), the use of this language in bilingual education in the USA has been mainly confined to transitional bilingual programmes (TBE) aimed at integrating minority students into the monolingual English-speaking mainstream. Initially, these were envisaged as 'early exit' programmes, based on a deficit perspective, positioning bilingual children as 'handicapped'. Later, there was the emergence of TBE 'late exit', or language maintenance programmes, where children's bilingualism was seen as a resource rather than a problem (Abbate-Vaughn, 2004).

(Continues...)

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Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: Multilingual Matters Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2008
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 1847690769
• ISBN 13: 9781847690760
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 264
• Redattore: Helot Christine, De Mejia Anne-Marie
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile