Good for this school in Missouri for exploring bilingual education, though Oh, How I Wish there was more information given. All I can glean from the article is that the elementary student classrooms each have two teachers, one who speaks in English, the other who speaks in Spanish. Sort of like a riff on the One Parent, One Language strategy.
I've heard of programs in which students switch classrooms every other day, one a Spanish-only classroom, the other English-only, complete with language- and culture-appropriate wall decorations. I have a friend who teaches in a similar program, where she teaches in Spanish every other day while her partner teacher handles the English days. I also volunteered during undergrad in a school with bilingual programming (though not dual immersion), in which the heritage Spanish speakers were grouped in classrooms (just one teacher, though) where the language of instruction alternated weekly (by middle school, though a higher concentration of Spanish in elementary). The philosophical difference between the former examples and the last supposedly being that the students learn to associate one particular person with a language, making them less likely to want to code-switch or use the non-target language. I have not seen any research as to the differential effectiveness of either tactic, though I'd love to read it if it exists somewhere (outside my brief Google Scholar search). So back to the model in the article. It is unclear whether both teachers are in the room all day, whether lessons are taught and then mirrored in the other language or whether certain subjects are taught by one teacher while the other is occupied elsewhere (or is providing support). It's also not clear how the language presentation is divided, though I would probably assume it's following a 50/50 balanced model, given the two teachers. One line in particular that impressed me about this particular school is that they plan on expanding one grade per year (typical for new bilingual programs) until it's available K-12, and the expansion into junior high and high school is fantastic. I only wish more places had the interest and resources for plans like that. I love the growing enthusiasm for bilingual education, especially dual immersion, though I wish programs would be even more ambitious and aim for minority-language dominant 90/10 or 80/20 scaled models rather than the relatively more conservative 50/50. But on the other hand, I understand the pool of qualified teachers is an issue when creating these programs, so for the time being I am satisfied and heartened to see starts like this.
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The WEIRD(O) concept is one I came across a while ago, and it resonated with me. Here's another great essay on the topic. While I can't exactly claim that my research avoids the Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic (or Online) demographics, I do feel drawn to the argument that we shouldn't make generalizations about populations based on certain subsets of the population. That's why I think research mainly done with one type of bilingual (early, late, heritage, L2, formal, natural, immersed, etc.) shouldn't end up being reported as "bilinguals" behave in x way, at least until those results have been replicated with bilinguals of other acquisition experiences.
Of course, that argument should also extend to less commonly studied language combinations, and English-Spanish (and vice versa) is huge proportion of the bilingualism research. That's part of what I like about using verbal fluency tasks to study bi/multilingual cognition. Though Spanish is the most comfortable L2 (or heritage L1) for me to study, verbal fluency tasks are flexible enough to study many other combinations, and I look forward to the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues and students in other languages. I also like to bring up the WEIRD(O) concept in the classroom as an important qualifier (here's another great one from John Oliver) when readings either consist of academic research articles (as they do in a course I teach on bilingualism) or synthesize/report on academic research (like news articles or an essay I used when teaching freshman composition). Finding the right balance between respecting the scientific process and understanding an individual study's limitations can be a tricky line, but it's exactly the kind of process that develops the crucial critical thinking skills undergrads need. |
AuthorThis is a place where I record thoughts on second language research and pedagogical theory Archives
June 2019
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