| Predominant Research Trend |
|
Predominant Policy Trend |
| Primacy of L1 development for all students |
|
Primacy of L1 development for Anglophones, L2 for all others |
| Longer for academic development |
|
As short as politically possible |
| Mediation and appreciation |
|
Neglect, if not acculturation |
| All students |
|
Non-anglophones |
| Multiple/strength-based/ongoing |
|
One-shot/high stakes |
| L1 + L2 + Lx |
|
L2 (English) predominantly |
| Enrichment/Additive |
|
Compensatory/Subtractive |
| Home↔School |
|
Home → School |
| Resource/Right |
|
Problem |
|
Colin Baker
Virginia Collier/Wayne Thomas Jim Cummins Eugene Garcia Kenji Hakuta Stephen Baker Wallace Lambert Lily Wong-Fillmore |
Principals |
Keith Baker/Adriana de Kanter
William Bennett Linda Chavez Rosalie Pedalino Porter Ronald Reagan Ron Unz |
I will comment on the final row in the table after a discussion of the various topics. As a basic framework for my review, all of the references for my discussion will come exclusively from the authors included in the Encyclopedia. The following sections are ample support for my contention that we have a sufficient knowledge base to proceed with the establishment of programs that benefit students, programs that unfortunately are precluded for many of us.
L1 Development
The research on this critical aspect of the education of English learners is considerable and growing. It proceeds from a variety of disciplines—linguistics, psychology, education, anthropology, cognitive science, and others—and all of these are represented in the Encyclopedia. The early research on brain plasticity and lateralization by Lenneberg, Penfield and others was important in shaping our view of how the brain processes linguistic data. Chomsky later introduced the concept of the language acquisition device, essentially a black box input/output model designed to help visualize how language proficiency is a process internal to the mind, as opposed to earlier behaviorist models that saw language learning as habit formation. Those researchers interested in bilingualism and second language acquisition used Chomsky’s cognitive approach to construct theories of bilingual development. Much of this research, as in the early work of Lambert, Troike, Wong-Fillmore and others has been elaborated and largely confirmed by later researchers such as Thomas and Collier, Hakuta, Cummins, and Krashen; these and other writers have also pointed out how their work relates to the education of children growing up in multilingual contexts.
As Iliana Reyes (pp. 78-81) concludes, this whole body of research is clear in its implications that first language development is crucial for further language and cognitive development; yet, there are those who have influenced the formulation of school policies who insist that this need not be a concern for language minority children. At best they are indifferent to first language development for non-Anglophones, suggesting that the acquisition of English is the sine qua non for school success; often, they are hostile to the possibility that these children may retain their first language since this would indicate lack of political assimilation. Therefore they advocate a policy that would emphasize English acquisition over all else, including retention and further development of the first language. A catalyst for the development and implementation of this policy at the national level were the rules and regulations promoted by William Bennett, Secretary of Education under Ronald Reagan, who had declared that bilingual education was “wrong and against the American concept.” Bennett’s view that alternatives to bilingual education, alternatives that used only English as a medium of instruction, needed to be encoded in law created the impetus for movements calling for English immersion curriculum for language minority students (see the entry on Bennett by Gregory Pearson, pp. 57-58).
Entries on English Immersion (Kellie Rolstad, pp. 259-264) and the English for the Children campaign (Eric Johnson, pp. 256-259) describe the arguments used by proponents for an all-English or English-predominant curriculum for non-Anglophones. Ron Unz, a California scientist who is the most visible of the English immersion advocates, clearly had no research or theoretical basis for advancing his argument. He aligned himself closely with US English, an organization founded by Senator S. I. Hayakawa and briefly headed by Linda Chavez, a conservative activist appointed by President Reagan to several positions (see her entry by Gregory Pearson, pp. 127-128). Since the mission of US English is to make English the official language of the United States, Unz’ ties with it is seen as evidence that his was more a political and ideological agenda than an academic one. Keith Baker and Adriana de Kanter, two analysts at the US Department of Education in the late 1970s and early 1980s, did offer research support for their advocacy; however, their argument appears to be based on a misinterpretation of the Canadian experience of French immersion for English speaking children. While they cite research for their views, they misapply it to the case of the United States. Rosalie Pedalino Porter also cites the Canadian immersion programs as evidence of the superiority of English immersion in the United States (see the entry by Sarah Catherine Moore, pp. 660-661, especially the reference to Porter’s “declaration”). Many of these authors also refer to the “success” of programs after the passage of Proposition 227 in California, an argument that is directly refuted by Stephen Krashen (see his entry by Jeff MacSwan, pp. 413-414) among others included in the Encyclopedia. Jim Crawford, a journalist and bilingual education advocate (see Mary Carol Combs, pp. 183-185) has included an exhaustive compilation of the arguments and counterarguments on the question of first language development and the putative successes of English-immersion education on his website.
The Encyclopedia presents a clear picture on the question of first language development: research urges us to give it the highest possible priority for all children, while the predominant policy in the United States, promoted by English-only and English immersion advocates, accepts this as a principle but only for English-speaking students. All others can forego their L1 as long as they are replacing it with English.
Research on first language development has been critical for
the advance of bilingual education research and theory. Some of
the central concepts in the bilingual literature that derive from
that on first language are discussed in the following
subsections.
Critical period. A number of researchers have contributed to our understanding of how language is best acquired at certain times in the life cycle. This research is commonly referred to collectively as the critical period hypothesis. In his lead entry on this topic, John Petrovic (pp. 194-197) discusses the work of some of the early neurolinguists such as Lenneberg and Penfield, and extends his analysis to the more recent work of Steven Pinker. While the work is controversial because of the constraints on experiments with children, Petrovic suggests that the research points to a period between age 6 and puberty in which normal language acquisition becomes increasingly difficult. Perhaps even more tenuous are conclusions about a critical period for the acquisition of a second language (L2). He, along with other researchers such as Hakuta and colleagues, recommend that we think in terms of an optimal period rather than an inflexible critical period for L2 acquisition. Still, while most agree that language acquisition would be best started at an early age, there is much evidence in the research that adults are quite efficient learners of language (cf Eric Johnson’s discussion, pp. 303-304): we should not use age as an excuse to keep language learning opportunities from anyone of any age.
Code-switching. Code-switching (CS) is one of the most prevalent and natural behaviors among “natural” bilinguals. Concepts such as parallel-channel processing and matrix language and distinctions such as that between inter- and intra-sentential CS have been formulated, debated and refined from very early on. In his entry, Rudy Troike (pp. 142-147) describes the research on this phenomenon and corrects the record with respect to its character and significance: CS is not only prevalent, but, contrary to popular conception as well as some of the earliest writings about it, it is evidence of a high level of proficiency and extreme linguistic sophistication in both languages. This is so because bilinguals exhibit great sensitivity to the rules of the languages in and out of which they are switching; these switches are possible only if there is also deep competence in both languages. Troike gives examples from various languages and cites many studies (e.g. by Rodolfo Jacobson, Carol Myers-Scotton, Shana Poplack and others) to support his claim. Jo Anne Kleifgen’s analysis (pp. 226-229) that CS is a skill that continues to develop in bilinguals as they mature is consistent with Troike’s discussion. Iliana Reyes (pp. 78-81) also notes that CS is common in the development of bilingual proficiency, and highlights its social significance as a way to reinforce group identity. Likewise, a number of other writers, including Chris Faltis (pp. 161-163), Josué González (pp. 238-240), and Kathy Escamilla and Susan Hopewell (713-719) discuss CS as a central phenomenon in bilingual development; they also all agree that it is an indicator of expanded language resources rather than some sort of deficit. At the very least what this body of research tells us is that we can dismiss claims that CS is somehow an indicator of some kind of linguistic or cognitive deficiency. CS should be recognized by teachers and the society at large as the valuable skill that it is; we then need to construct learning approaches that take advantage of it.
Interlanguage. Interlanguage is the system of communication used by bilinguals as they become competent speakers of a second or additional language. Research on interlanguage has focused on the nature and rate of acquisition of the “target” language—the language the learner is in the process of acquiring. However, it also contains features of the L1, and can even have unique features of its own. Interlanguage is a meta-state in which there is dynamic movement in the development of the first language and acquisition of the second. David Freeman (pp. 731-735) discusses interlanguage as a normal development in second language acquisition. At the same time, Peter Sayer’s entry on the concept (pp. 404-406) explains the phenomenon of fossilization, where progress in the interlanguage toward acquiring the target language has become stuck; he cautions that bilingual pedagogy and curriculum development should consider how the language development needs of these students can be met.
Timeframe
Over the past twenty years, as ideological battles over bilingual education have shifted the emphasis away from the use of first language as a medium of instruction for non-Anglophones toward straight-for-English approaches, willingness to use public funds for long-term bilingual programs has waned significantly. Currently, many states have limits on the amount of time a student can be served by a special curriculum using the L1 while developing competence in L2. In states such as Arizona and California, voter initiatives promoted by anti-bilingual education advocates limit most children to one year in most cases (see entries on Proposition 203 in Arizona by Wayne Wright [pp. 684-688] and Kate Mahony [pp. 688-691] and on Proposition 227 in California by Grace McField [pp. 691-696] and Margarita Jimenez Silva [pp. 696-699]). These limits are based on no identifiable research, but rather on anecdotes about real or imagined cases of immigrant ancestors or friends who learned English quickly once immersed in the society. Instead, the best research available points strongly to a longer timeframe for developing language proficiency necessary for higher-order language tasks and school success. The work of Virginia Collier and Wayne Thomas (see the entry by Judith Munter and Josefina Tinajero, pp. 153-154) and Jim Cummins (entry on Cummins’ BICS/CALP distinction by Kellie Rolstad and Jeff MacSwan 62-65]) suggests that perhaps as much as 6 years or longer, depending on a variety of social factors, could be required for students to acquire sufficient language skills to succeed in an all-L2 classroom.
In her entry on how long it takes a non-English speaker to learn English, Michelle Kuamoo (249-253) refutes the notion that these students are able to become proficient in English enough to compete with age-level peers in as little as a year. Her discussion includes the work of Genessee on brain research and Stephen Krashen on the difference between first and second language acquisition. The arguments for a limited time frame are countered not merely by these theorists, but also by evidence that post-227 (California) and post-203 (Arizona) English immersion programs have failed miserably to reclassify students as fluent English speakers in one year. Yet, since this notion fits well with the ideology of the day, these programs continue, bolstered by declarations by advocates who claim their success even as the data show otherwise.
Role of Culture
In their work on “funds of knowledge” for teaching, Luis Moll and his colleagues (see Mary Carol Combs’ entry at pp. 558-559) promote the view that the cultural knowledge of the child should be an essential building block in school curriculum. They advocate a Vygotskian socio-cultural approach that sees the culture of the child as an important mediating structure for the construction of further knowledge in the learner. These notions are also at the heart of what are sometimes called “culturally-responsive pedagogy” or “culturally competent teaching” (see this discussion by Heriberto Godina at pp. 203-206). Such approaches to pedagogy construct curriculum from the prior experiences of the children, and create the possibility for the local community to be an important part of the teaching and learning experience. This is effected by both inviting people from the community (parents, local citizens, others) into the classroom and by having teachers and others from the school explore the communities around the school in which they are largely strangers. The resulting inter-penetration creates a partnership for learning in which students reinforce their own identities and understand and appreciate the role of school in their education. An important dimension of this learning experience based on cultural mediation is the language of the child. To the extent that it is valued and used in the school for important functions, the mediating role of culture is enhanced. To the extent that it is devalued and excluded, it created anxiety, ambivalence, and conflict that militates against learning.
These important insights from research on schools and their communities are frequently negated by the practice of schools that are influenced by negative attitudes toward multiculturalism. Josué González (pp. 200-203) explains some of this mentality in his entry on cultural deficit and cultural mismatch theories. The view that language minority children bring a “culture of poverty” with them to school, a culture encoded in their non-English language, reinforces the promotion of pedagogies designed to erase the handicap. The notion that we may want to “affirm diversity,” as firmly asserted by Sonia Nieto in her writings (see entry by Marietta Saravia-Shore, pp. 603-604), is alien to that way of thinking—sometimes inspired by xenophobia, sometimes by a genuine misunderstanding of the value of the cultural knowledge brought into the school by these children.
Targets
The United States has been slow to recognize the importance of multilingual proficiency in a rapidly globalizing world. We are hard-pressed to find a genuinely monolingual context anywhere, yet the United States still lags behind much of the world in providing language learning opportunities to its citizens. Foreign language study, as Elsie Szecsy points out (pp. 554-558), has not kept up with higher education enrollments in the US. And even so, our collective lack of interest in such study translates into dismal fluency levels. Larisa Warhol (pp. 497-501) attributes much of our problem in this area to a “lack of commitment to language diversity.” The resulting monolingual mentality reinforces the idea that only English is needed to succeed in the world; this in turn gives legitimacy to the attitude that only non-English speakers need to be involved in bilingual education, since its primary purpose should be to teach English to those who do not have it. So, while researchers extol the virtues of “dual language” or “two way” or “double immersion” bilingual programs in which everyone, everyone, has the best opportunity to become proficient in a second language (see Grace McField, pp. 229-232), our ideology limits the targets of these programs to non-Anglophones. When such a limitation exists, where we create programs for the “needy” among us, those programs are almost always treated as compensatory, and are therefore less successful than they would be otherwise.
Assessment
Kate Menken, in her entries on High Stakes Testing (pp. 350-353) and on federal testing requirements (pp. 604-607), as well as her recent book on US policy, chronicles the effects of these tests on language minority children: higher failure and drop-out rates, higher assignments to remedial groups, placements in special needs classrooms, higher subscriptions to GED programs, and others. In large part this is because of testing in the child’s second language, administered by those who have no expertise in the child’s first language. The enactment of the Bush administration’s education law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), accelerated the proliferation of state accountability systems that had high stakes tests at their center. Unfortunately, while NCLB placed extreme demands on children and their schools, it did not provide the adequate resources that would constitute a real opportunity to learn for them. As an example, the criteria promulgated on highly qualified teachers (HQTs) used by most states for certification purposes say nothing about knowledge, proficiency or promotion of the child’s non-English language. This is understandable since, as Wayne Wright reminds us (pp. 607-616), NCLB has totally expunged the word “bilingual” from the federal lexicon: “Absent from Title III [formerly Title IV—the Bilingual Education Act] are any recognitions of the benefits of bilingual education and bilingualism, issues of cultural differences, or the need for multicultural understanding.” The result is the certification of teachers for these students who need know nothing about their language needs. At a time when researchers call even more urgently for assessment for all children that is continuous, formative, “authentic,” on-going, and multiple, especially for children learning English, the nation is rushing headlong toward one-shot tests that have harsh effects on the lives of these families.
Medium
We have already mentioned the rapid movement toward English-only or English-predominant education for language minority students in the US. This development is the opposite of what the research demonstrates are superior approaches, and the opposite of what is happening in much of the rest of the world. As societies in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and other parts of North America pursue opportunities for all of their citizens to develop greater and more formal capacities in multiple languages, the US has aggressively promoted, sometimes through legislation with harsh sanctions, English-only media of instruction for all, including language minority students. State laws in California and Arizona, passed by voter initiative, are among the strictest in the country in this regard (see entries on Proposition 203 and Proposition 227 in Arizona and California, respectively). Researchers such as Wallace Lambert and Richard Tucker pioneered programs of 2-way, also called dual-language, bilingual education in North America in the early 1960s. From that time, studies consistently show positive results for both language and content learning. Exemplary programs such as those at the Oyster School in Washington DC (see Paquita B. Holland’s discussion at pp. 638-643) and Coral Way Elementary School in Miami, the first Spanish-English public school bilingual program in the country, have a long history of high student performance in both bilingual proficiency and academic success. The common characteristics of these programs are (1) use of two or more languages as media of instruction in more or less equal proportion; (2) both minority and majority students learning together, each receiving instruction in their first and second languages; (3) language and cultural awareness and appreciation goals, with strong parental and community support (see Grace McField’s entry, pp. 229-232). It remains to be seen whether the accumulation of such results will eventually change the mood of the states toward language proficiency opportunities for all.
Character
Much bilingual education in the world is in private schools for elites (see Colin Baker’s essay, pp. 871-878). These groups have discovered, perhaps only intuitively, what the research shows, that there are cognitive, social, academic, cultural, and economic advantages that come with multiple language proficiency (see the entry by Geri McDonough Bell, pp. 149-153). This is what Wallace Lambert perceived in his early studies in the 1960s of students in the St. Lambert School immersed in a bilingual program. He called this phenomenon “additive” because he saw that many non-language advantages came along with gaining a minority language for majority students. The opposite of this, “subtractive” bilingualism, attended programs where the object was to supplant the first language of language minority students with a second language. Josué González’ discussion of additive and subtractive programs (pp. 10-13) focuses on the treatment of the first language: when it is viewed as a deficit, a handicap, it follows that the school program will have the goal of its subordination, if not elimination; as an advantage, the purpose of the program will be to cultivate and expand it. One is a compensatory program for the “needy,” the other an enrichment program for the gifted. As already mentioned, while the research from around the world points us to enrichment, our policies and program development in bilingual education reflect an increasingly compensatory character.
Home-School Isomorphism
The previous discussion on the role of culture is closely related to this topic. The predominant view of the role of parents and the community in schools is reflected in the phrase “parental involvement.” This conveys the sense that what is important for the success of children, especially minority children, is that their home experiences start to reflect and reinforce their experiences in school. What’s more, the learning structures of school should be transported to the home and community. In other words, since all of the educational value lies in what happens in school, the home should do its best to imitate it. For example, the practice of formal reading and the provision of a definite study space for children is considered an important part of parenting designed for academic success. This is an asymmetrical relationship in which the home and community are in the subordinate position, and where the required change is one-way. To the extent that this is a characteristic of bilingual programs, the approach to parental involvement is consistent with the view that there is little of value in the homes of language minority children. The opposite view is that the children bring many strengths with them to school, having learned a lot from home and community about how to learn and act. The social networks that are part of the community can be used with profit by the school if only they started with another attitude. Heriberto Godina’s discussion of cultural capital (pp. 197-199) is useful in this regard, as is the previously mentioned discussion of the funds of knowledge approach. This latter view creates a greater sense of partnership and mutual sharing of valuable knowledge that leads to an enhanced learning environment for children.
Policy Orientation. All we have said so far about the role of research in policy development in bilingual education points to a clear conclusion: as much as researchers overwhelmingly demonstrate the superior results of programs of first language development that treat the first language of children as an advantage to cultivate within a context that values parents and communities, the policies and programs that we have developed reflect an opposite view—that the language and cultural background of the child are problems to be solved, if not handicaps to be eradicated. This view is deeply embedded in policies directed at the education of language minority students. In those states where bilingual education is still allowed, it is transitional and largely subtractive in nature. Luis Javier Rangel-Ortiz relates such policy orientations to relations of power (pp. 472-476). In his discussion of the development of national education policy during his tenure in Washington, Gene Garcia (pp. 377-386), Director of the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA) during the Clinton Administration, assesses the effect of policy developments on programs and practice. It should be noted that, for the brief period between 1994 and 2001, the Bilingual Education Act characterized language diversity in the United States as a “national resource.” Unfortunately, in spite of the hopes that many of us had for support for bilingual education from the Bush Administration, what became Title III of NCLB was highly disappointing. Essentially, the word bilingual was absent from the law and from the priorities of the new Department of Education: OBEMLA was replaced by the Office of English Language Acquisition, signaling an ominous move toward English-only instruction for language minority students. It represents a reversal from viewing non-English languages as “national resources” to seeing them as “problems” as they had for much of our legal history. One of the hopes some of us have in a change of administrations in Washington is that we might once again see the value of language diversity and act to create better educational experiences for language minority students in that spirit.
Final Notes
There are many topics I have not been able to cover and many authors I have not been able to cite in this short review. Students of bilingual education interested in history, critical court decisions, curricular design, language revitalization, pedagogical approaches, specific cases and bilingual program characteristics and a host of other issues will find them in this valuable resource. There is an extensive and very helpful index at the end of the second volume. Most of the entries have fairly standard titles, so they can be easily found in the alphabetical layout. As a person interested in bilingual education as a global phenomenon, I was disappointed that there was only one entry (by Colin Baker) that dealt extensively with this topic. But in an encyclopedia of more than 1000 pages it may be unfair to complain about a lack of entries. I found the appendices at the end, many of them comprising original texts of historical documents, very useful; I also enjoyed reading the biographies of some of the important figures in bilingual education.
The Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education is a massive undertaking; the editor, who is also an author of many entries, has created a valuable resource for those of us who have desired a comprehensive repository of essential information in our field. It represents an important advance in the continuing development of the knowledge base of bilingual education.
About the Reviewer
Richard Ruiz received degrees in French Literature at Harvard College and in Anthropology and Philosophy of Education at Stanford University. He was Head of the Department of Language, Reading and Culture in the College of Education of the University of Arizona from 1993 to 1999; he is currently a professor in that department, with faculty affiliations in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching and in the Program on Comparative Cultural and Literary Studies. He has been a consultant to the governments of Mexico, Australia, Guatemala, Bolivia, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Netherlands Antilles (Aruba and Curaçao), Israel, South Africa, and native communities in the United States and Canada. He was editor of the Bilingual Research Journal for three years, and serves on the editorial boards of Urban Education, Teaching Education, Journal of Teacher Education, and the Review of Educational Research. He has been Chair of the Standing Committee on the Role and Status of Minorities in Educational Research and Development and Chair of the Social Justice Action Committee of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). In June 2001, he was appointed Director of Social Justice of the American Educational Research Association.
No comments:
Post a Comment