Bilingual/Immersion Education: What the Research Tells Us
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BILINGUAL/IMMERSION EDUCATION: WHAT THE RESEARCH TELLS US
INTRODUCTION
This chapter explores key research findings about bilingual/immersion education and the related efficacy of various approaches to teaching bilingual students. When this research is examined, and taken seriously, the picture of what constitutes an effective educational approach for bilingual students can be clearly ascertained. However, this clarity is not yet reflected in wider public and policy debates, where strongly polarised positions both for and against bilingual/immersion education remain commonplace. A key reason why wider public and policy debates on bilingual/ immersion education continue to be so contested rests with the widely different understandings among commentators of what such an education actually constitutes. At one end of the continuum are those who would classify as bilingual any educational approach adopted for, or directed at bilingual students, irrespective of their educational aims (fostering bilingualism or monolingualism) or the role (if any) of first language (L1) and second language (L2) as languages of instruction. In other words, simply the presence of bilingual students in the classroom is deemed sufficient to classify a program as bilingual (see, e.g. Baker and de Kanter, 1981). At the other end of the continuum are those who distinguish clearly between non-bilingual, weak and strong bilingual programs (e.g. Baker, 2006; Skutnabb-Kangas, 1981, 2000). It is the latter approach that I will adopt in this analysis. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S : D E F I N I N G B I L I N G U A L / I M M E R S I O N E D U C AT I O N
There are a plethora of existing typologies with respect to bilingual/ immersion education in the research literature, although, as one might expect, they do not always correspond or overlap, depending on the initial starting point, and position of the researcher. Some of the most accessible and informed can be found in Hornberger (1991), Baker (2006), Cummins (2003), and Skutnabb-Kangas (2000); for a useful overview, see May, Hill and Tiakiwai (2004) and Genesee, LindholmLeary, Saunders and Christian (2006). J. Cummins and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 5: Bilingual Education, 19–34. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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S T E P H E N M AY
Before unpacking the characteristics of bilingual/immersion education further in light of these typologies, however, it is useful to begin with a classic definition of bilingual education, first posited by Andersson and Boyer: Bilingual education is instruction in two languages and the use of those two languages as mediums of instruction for any part, or all, of the school curriculum. (1970, p. 12; their emphasis) Put simply, bilingual education involves instruction in two languages (see also Baker and Prys Jones, 1998; Cummins, 2003; Freeman, 1998; Hamers and Blanc, 2000). This immediately excludes programs that include bilingual students but do not involve bilingual instruction, most notably submersion
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