Language Development Resources For Bilingual Bicultural Education

A study of the beliefs and practices of parents and educators raising future generations of multilingual children.

The publication brings together the latest thinking in five areas important to bilingual education. Part one, legal aspects, deals with limitations and capabilities of the judicial process, interpretations of major court decisions, and implications of these decisions in terms of community members, educators, and school boards. Philosophies, discussed in part two, encompasses the need for philosophical diversity to account for the needs of marked and unmarked population differences, clarification of philosophical disagreements, and suggests bilingual education will contribute to the assimilation process rather than to cultural and linguistic pluralism. The third part deals with social factors: sociology of language, ethnography of speaking, and pragmatics of natural languages; ethnographic monitoring, and bilingualism and biculturalism in education. Part four covers language and content in bilingual education: language acquisition and language learning in late-entry programs, a Canadian bilingual education program, curriculum development in L1 and L2 in a maintenance program, and curriculum/language contexts. Part five, assessment, encompasses: problems in assessment of the effect of language education policies in a multilingual society; language dominance and pedagogical considerations; and criteria to assess Spanish reading instructional materials. The last section describes the activities of the National Network of Centers for Bilingual Education. (AH)