Bilingual Education (Paperback, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1997)

This volume provides a comprehensive account of the implementation of bilingual education programmes in countries throughout the world. Bilingual programs have been implemented to achieve a variety of educational and social goals in different contexts. Some programmes are intended to support the maintenance of national minority languages or to revitalize languages whose long-term survival is threatened; others aim to help recent immigrants succeed academically while making the transition to instruction taught primarily through the majority language of the society. In addition, bilingual programmes have been used to teach additional languages to students from the majority or dominant language group. Similar theoretical principles underlie the development of bilingual conversational and academic skills in all these diverse contexts. For academics, graduate students, and policy-makers, this volume clearly outlines the social and educational goals that can be achieved through bilingual education. It also highlights the need to take account of the complex political context of inter-group relationships within which bilingual programs are inevitably embedded.