bilingual education definition

• More from M-W
• To save this word, you'll need to log in. Log In

bilingual education

Definition of bilingual education

Examples of bilingual education in a sentence.

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'bilingual education.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

1900, in the meaning defined above

Articles Related to bilingual education

How to Write a Bilingual Dictionary

Word Matters, Episode 30

Dictionary Entries Near bilingual education

bilingualism

Cite this Entry

“Bilingual education.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bilingual%20education. Accessed 23 Mar. 2024.

More from Merriam-Webster on bilingual education

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about bilingual education

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the day.

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

8 grammar terms you used to know, but forgot, homophones, homographs, and homonyms, commonly misspelled words, how to use em dashes (—), en dashes (–) , and hyphens (-), absent letters that are heard anyway, popular in wordplay, the words of the week - mar. 22, 12 words for signs of spring, 9 superb owl words, 'gaslighting,' 'woke,' 'democracy,' and other top lookups, 10 words for lesser-known games and sports, games & quizzes.

Request More Info

Fill out the form below and a member of our team will reach out right away!

" * " indicates required fields

What Is Bilingual Education? [+ Career Guide]

What Is Bilingual Education?

How does bilingual education work, types of bilingual education, the importance of bilingual education, benefits of bilingual teachers in schools, bilingual education careers, how to become a bilingual educator.

Bilingual education is the delivery of academic material in two languages, one of which is usually the students’ native language. Students of all ages enroll in schools and learning environments where the primary language is different from their native language; in order to keep these students on the same academic timeline as their peers, schools may offer a bilingual education program that makes course content more accessible while students learn a new language.

Most bilingual or dual language education in the United States is delivered in Spanish and English , but Mandarin Chinese, French, German and Vietnamese dual language programs are gaining traction. The U.S. has never declared an official language, but since 78.5 percent of the population speaks English at home, it is considered the unofficial “native” tongue. As such, most bilingual education programs in the U.S. focus on helping students develop proficiency in English . This is why bilingual students in America are often referred to as English Language Learners (ELL), or simply English Learners (EL).

There are several different types of bilingual education programs, the format of which varies depending on the end goal.

Bilingual education programs were first introduced in the U.S. in the mid-17th century , as a way to help Polish immigrants assimilate to the American manufacturing industry. Today, dual language programs are predominantly used for a similar purpose, though the goals have expanded to helping non-English speakers excel academically and even teaching native English speakers a new language.

In grade schools, bilingual education programs incorporate both the students’ native language (the partner language) and English in varying proportions :

50/50: English and the partner language are used equally throughout the class, schoolday, semester or program length. This model is common for children at the elementary school level, beginning in kindergarten or first grade and potentially continuing into middle and high school if needed. Most children who enter 50/50 bilingual programs before 7 years of age are much more likely to become proficient in the new language than older students, if enrolled in the program consistently.

90/10: This format is used by both non-English speakers and native English-speaking students to learn a new language. Eighty to 90 percent of the course content is delivered either in English or the partner language, with some classes offered entirely in the partner language.

100 percent immersion: Second language immersion programs use a partner language (typically not English) for all communications, both in and outside the classroom.

Dual language programs are often found in U.S. schools located in neighborhoods with large immigrant or non-English speaking populations, while immersion programs are typically found in schools with a majority English-speaking student body.

Bilingual education programs differ according to the ultimate goal. Do students need to become proficient in English to communicate with their teachers and peers, or do they wish to learn a new language for academic enrichment or expanded career opportunities? Do they want to maintain fluency in both their native language and English? There are programs available for all of these language learners.

See the chart below for a breakdown of the different types of bilingual education programs, using English and Spanish as example languages. Also included are immersion and heritage language programs, which provide slightly different opportunities for academic and cultural enrichment.

As you can see, bilingual education can be classified in multiple ways; for example, a student can be enrolled in a dual language, one-way, transitional, early exit program.

Above all, bilingual education affords all students the opportunity to earn an education, no matter what language they speak. Being able to access their native language for support ensures that non-English speakers can progress academically alongside their English-speaking peers.

In addition to educational equity, dual language programs can foster:

• Multilingualism and multiliteracy
• More effective communication skills
• Enhanced awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity
• Greater connection to a community of peers
• Higher levels of academic achievement
• Increased cognitive function
• Broader cultural representation and equity in schools
• Diverse opportunities for students to thrive in a global job market
• Greater cultural empathy
• An expanded sense of cultural identity

The best way to support bilingual learners is to have bilingual teachers in schools, especially schools in areas with high populations of non-English speakers. When teachers can be a resource to learners in multiple languages, they may observe the following in their students:

• Improved academic performance
• Better communication skills
• Increased ability to think creatively, recognize patterns and solve problems
• Enhanced linguistic and cultural awareness
• Greater ability to apply fundamental concepts to novel situations
• Improved social skills
• Greater confidence, self esteem and a more positive outlook

When a bilingual student successfully graduates with proficiency or fluency in English, they may have access to a greater range of job opportunities in the U.S. and beyond.

Students who benefit from dual language education programs may find that they wish to become bilingual educators themselves. Fortunately, bilingual or multilingual teachers are in high demand , as learning environments across the country become increasingly more multicultural and inclusive . Now more than ever, American students need teachers who can teach the whole child, addressing not only their academic needs but their social, emotional and cultural needs .

Since demand is high, there are often financial benefits to becoming a bilingual teacher. According to Zippia , the average annual salary for a bilingual teacher is $51,770, while the average starting salary for a teacher in the U.S. is $41,955. Some schools will even offer stipends or bonuses to teachers who can add bilingual instruction to their educator skill set.

Possible careers for bilingual teachers who have earned a Bachelor’s degree or Master of Education include*:

• Job description: Instructs non-native English speakers in the fundamentals of the English language.
• Salary: $52,701
• Job description: Serves as a classroom aid to students whose native language is not English, relaying course content and instructions if and when the student lacks understanding due to a language barrier.
• Salary: $36,519
• Job description: Teaches a new language to students primarily for academic enrichment purposes.
• Salary: $53,918
• Job description: Designs educational curriculums, introduces improvements to teaching methods, develops educational programs and events and/or coordinates educational services for multilingual students.
• Salary: $49,139
• Job description: Develops educational programs and curricula that accounts for students who currently or will speak multiple languages.
• Salary: $54,176
• Job description: Serves as additional classroom support to multilingual students with special needs, including academic, physical, personal and social-emotional needs.
• Salary: $31,394
• Job description: Provides instruction in a specialized subject in multiple languages. Requires in-depth knowledge of the applicable subject, in addition to bilingual fluency.
• Salary: $41,000–$64,000+

Of course, most of these professions exist without a bilingual element, but employers will often advertise open positions with an explicit bilingual requirement.

*All salaries are national averages generated by Zippia.com as of November 2022.

If you are not already bilingual, start learning and practicing as soon as you can, even if you don’t yet have the proper degree qualifications to become a licensed teacher.

To become any kind of educator in a public school, you will need a master’s degree or, at the very least, a Bachelor’s degree, preferably in education. A degree in a second language is also ideal preparation. You will also need to become licensed to teach (at least in public schools) in your preferred state, and possibly hold a certification in teaching in a second language . In certain cases, such as in high-need areas or amid teacher shortages, there are alternative routes to teaching certification that don’t require a bachelor’s or master’s degree in education.

If you are ready to earn your master’s degree, you’ll need to decide which type of education degree will help you achieve your goals. A Master of Education (MEd) is typically designed for current educators to expand their pedagogical skill sets in and beyond the classroom , such as in school leadership or curriculum design. A Master of Arts (MA) provides new or aspiring teachers with practical skills they can use in the classroom. Both degrees offer specializations , including some with ESL instruction, and both can incorporate a field work element. For this component, aspiring bilingual educators can request placement in a school with a high population of non-native English speakers or a robust dual language program.

Once you earn your degree, become licensed to teach (if you are not already) and start your job search, be sure to include bilingual proficiency and instruction on your teaching resume. As previously stated, bilingual professionals are in high demand in nearly all industries, so highlighting this skill set will catch any potential employer’s eye.

As you explore teaching opportunities, be sure to take advantage of professional organizations and networks that support bilingual educators:

• National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE) : A non-profit membership organization dedicated to pursuing educational equity and academic excellence for bilingual/multilingual students. NABE works to influence, support and create policies, programs, research, pedagogy and professional development that serves both multilingual students and bilingual/dual language education professionals.
• TESOL (formerly Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages): The largest international association of professionals dedicated to advancing the quality of ESL education. Before non-native English speakers can teach English, they must earn their TESOL certificate .

The most valuable resource for entering bilingual education is other educators ! Find fellow professionals who work in a bilingual setting and ask them how they got to where they are. You may also wish to connect with faculty at a university that offers education degrees to determine the right path forward.

Ready to take that step? Download the free guide below to see why an MEd might be the ideal move.

Be Sure To Share This Article

• Share on Twitter
• Share on Facebook
• Share on LinkedIn

Top 11 Reasons to get Your Master of Education Degree

Free 22-page Book

• Master of Education

Related Posts

The Benefits of Bilingual Education and Its Impact on Student Learning and Growth

Approximately 5 million students in the United States are English language learners, and the number of English language learners (ELLs) in the US public school system continues to rise steadily, especially in more urbanized school districts.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), students who speak English as a second language are more likely to struggle with academics, and only about 67 percent will graduate from public high school in four years—whereas the average for all students is 84 percent. ELL students can better develop their English proficiency and close the gap in achievement by participating in language assistance programs or bilingual education programs, the NCES explains.

The benefits of bilingual education can begin with students in elementary school and follow them throughout their lives. Education’s impact can lead to a variety of outcomes depending on whether ELL students learn English in a monolingual or bilingual environment. Educators in diverse classrooms or working as school leaders should consider the benefits of bilingual education when creating curricula and establishing desired student learning outcomes.

What Is Bilingual Education?

While bilingual education can take many forms, it strives to incorporate multiple languages into the process of teaching. For example, since there is such a large Spanish-speaking population in the United States, many primary and secondary school students can benefit from educational environments where they are learning in both English and Spanish.

Bilingual education can often be the most effective when children are beginning preschool or elementary school. If children grow up speaking Spanish as their primary language, it can be difficult for them to be placed in English-speaking elementary schools and be expected to understand their teachers and classmates. In a bilingual classroom, however, young students can further establish their foundation of Spanish as well as English, better preparing them for the rest of their education.

Of course, this works for students who begin school speaking any language as their primary language. Children whose parents have come to the United States from another country may have limited English skills when they first begin elementary school. Teachers working in bilingual education classrooms will balance their use of two languages when teaching math, science, history, and other subjects to help these students develop a stronger foundation of their first language as well as English as their second language.

Academic Benefits

Students can benefit in many ways from participating in bilingual education programs or classrooms. Some of the benefits of bilingual education relate to intellect. For example, research has shown that students who can speak and write in multiple languages have cognitive advantages over their monolingual peers. Those who learn a second or third language from a young age are able to develop communication skills and a higher degree of literacy. Children who grow up in bilingual environments develop a keen awareness of how language works and have a stronger foundation for learning additional languages in the future.

Students can also benefit academically from bilingual education. Students who pursue higher education are typically required to take a foreign language at the collegiate level, so those who have been exposed to bilingual educational environments before college—and speak two or more languages—have an advantage over their peers. They can advance in their studies and feel comfortable with multiple communities of students on their campuses.

Students who are exposed to multiple languages throughout high school and college can also have long-term career benefits. Their proficiency in multiple languages is an advantage when they graduate and enter the workplace as professionals. Every industry has a need for effective communicators who can speak multiple languages to meet the needs of the growing number of English language learners in the United States. International operations also have a great need for professionals who can speak multiple languages and represent US-based organizations and companies.

Growth beyond Academics

While there are many benefits of bilingual education related to school and work, bilingual education programs also have a huge impact on students’ cultural and social growth. Children who grow up speaking English as a second language often come from culturally diverse backgrounds. Incorporating cultural education in the classroom can help create enriching academic experiences for all students.

Exploring multiple languages in the classroom provides a foundation for cultural education that allows students to learn and grow alongside classmates from a different cultural background. As a result, students learn to become more adaptable and more aware of the world around them.

To encourage the academic and cultural development of students in bilingual education settings, teachers should have a strong foundation in education and leadership. They should demonstrate a passion for teaching as well as an understanding of how language and culture work together in their students’ academic journeys. Educators should be aware of the role that policies play in the educational environments they cultivate and have an understanding of how to best represent their students’ cultural backgrounds.

Pursue a Master of Arts in Teaching or Master of Education in Education Policy and Leadership

To implement the best teaching practices in bilingual education classrooms, teachers should be equipped with a foundation in transformational leadership and cultural awareness. To that end, teachers looking to have a meaningful impact on the lives of their students can further their own education and pursue an advanced degree in education policy and leadership. Through programs like American University’s Master of Arts in Teaching and Master of Education in Education Policy and Leadership , educators can broaden their worldviews, engaging in topics such as education law and policy, quantitative research in education, and educational leadership and organizational change.

Culturally Responsive Teaching Strategies: Importance, Benefits & Tips

EdD vs. PhD in Education: Requirements, Career Outlook, and Salary

Transformational Leadership in Education

Bilingual Kidspot, “5 Amazing Benefits of a Bilingual Education”

Learning English, “Number of English Learners in US Schools Keeps Rising”

National Center for Education Statistics, “Digest of Education Statistics”

National Center for Education Statistics, “English Language Learners in Public Schools”

Pew Research Center, “6 Facts About English Language Learners in U.S. Public Schools”

USA Today, “More US Schools Teach in English and Spanish, But Not Enough to Help Latino Kids”

Request Information

• Subject List
• Take a Tour
• For Authors
• Subscriber Services
• Publications
• African American Studies
• African Studies
• American Literature
• Anthropology
• Architecture Planning and Preservation
• Art History
• Atlantic History
• Biblical Studies
• British and Irish Literature
• Childhood Studies
• Chinese Studies
• Cinema and Media Studies
• Communication
• Criminology
• Environmental Science
• Evolutionary Biology
• International Law
• International Relations
• Islamic Studies
• Jewish Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Latino Studies
• Linguistics
• Literary and Critical Theory
• Medieval Studies
• Military History
• Political Science
• Public Health
• Renaissance and Reformation
• Social Work
• Urban Studies
• Victorian Literature
• Browse All Subjects

How to Subscribe

• Free Trials

In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Bilingual Education and Bilingualism

Introduction, general overviews.

• Defining Bilingualism
• Bilingualism and Cognition
• Defining Bilingual Education
• Effectiveness of Bilingual Education Programs
• Translanguaging as a Pedagogical Issue
• Politics of Language and Bilingual Education

Related Articles Expand or collapse the "related articles" section about

About related articles close popup.

Lorem Ipsum Sit Dolor Amet

Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Aliquam ligula odio, euismod ut aliquam et, vestibulum nec risus. Nulla viverra, arcu et iaculis consequat, justo diam ornare tellus, semper ultrices tellus nunc eu tellus.

• A Pedagogy of Teacher Education
• Culturally Responsive Leadership
• Culturally Responsive Pedagogies
• Indigenous Education in a Global Context
• Linguistic Diversity
• Psychometric Issues in the Assessment of English Language Learners

Other Subject Areas

Forthcoming articles expand or collapse the "forthcoming articles" section.

• Gender, Power, and Politics in the Academy
• Girls' Education in the Developing World
• Non-Formal & Informal Environmental Education
• Find more forthcoming articles...
• Export Citations
• Share This Facebook LinkedIn Twitter

Bilingual Education and Bilingualism by Stephen May , Lincoln I. Dam LAST REVIEWED: 26 January 2022 LAST MODIFIED: 26 August 2014 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756810-0109

This article presents a selection of the key literature on bilingualism and bilingual education and gives readers access to the international research on the multiplicity of topics that make up these fields. While the term “bilingualism” is consistently used throughout this article, it should also be taken as incorporating multilingualism. The question of what constitutes bilingualism has been the subject of much debate, with definitions ranging from minimal to maximal competency in more than one language. Similarly, the links between bilingualism and education have also been widely debated. Prior to the 1960s, for example, research on bilingual students in schools attributed bilingualism with detrimental effects on thinking. From this, early researchers often claimed that bilingual education had few, if any, benefits. In contrast, the consensus of research since the 1960s strongly suggests the opposite, highlighting the cognitive benefits of bilingualism and, relatedly, that bilingual education is an effective approach for language learning when it is designed and implemented appropriately. A comprehensive review of the literature on bilingual education also suggests that it is a highly political issue on many levels. For instance, some have noted that bilingual education policies are seldom actually assessed on the basis of educational research and theory alone, but are instead shaped and determined by external influences such as political ideology. Added to this are the challenges associated with assessment measures for students undertaking bilingual education. Not only is testing a political act, but bilingual institutions and programs are confronted with significant complexities. These include how best to examine student learning and capabilities in ways that take aspects of their bilingual and cultural backgrounds into consideration while simultaneously meeting the requirements of often-monolingual assessment schemes. The themes presented here are but a sample of the topics that are considered vital to the progression of research encompassing bilingualism and bilingual education.

While there is an abundance of literature on bilingualism and bilingual education, two introductory texts stand out. These two texts were selected for their clarity, usefulness, and endurance in the field, as well as for the academic credentials and the long-standing reputations of their authors. Written as an entry-level reader from a cross-disciplinary assessment of the field, Baker 2011 (now in its fifth edition) thoroughly reviews all of the pressing issues and underlying concepts in bilingual education and bilingualism, at both individual and societal levels. Baker 2011 also takes a balanced approach to the efficacy of bilingual education, highlighting both its significant accomplishments, as well as the ongoing challenges bilingual education programs face, particularly in relation to their pedagogical and assessment practices. Undergraduate students, especially those new to the field, will find Baker 2011 thoughtfully and accessibly structured. Those with specific interests in the frameworks, principles, and practice of bilingual education should also refer to García 2009 . Unlike Baker 2011 , García 2009 takes a more technical approach to the topic, spending less time defending bilingual education and more time expounding and elaborating on it. The text is written from a bilingual practitioner’s perspective and comprises chapters on bilingual education policy, practice, pedagogy, and the assessment of bilinguals, with particular (although not exclusive) reference to the US context. García 2009 offers readers a thorough examination of the different types and frameworks of bilingual education, as well as their theoretical foundations, objectives, and pedagogical practices. García 2009 also provides an invaluable chapter on the notion of “translanguaging,” which highlights the often complex and hybrid language use of bilinguals (pp. 42–72), an emerging field of research in the field. Following from this, García argues for the need to mirror the translanguaging characteristics of bilinguals in bilingual education. For an accessible article-length overview of key research underpinning bilingual education, see also May 2008 . For older but still highly useful contributions, see Baker and Prys Jones 1998 and Cummins 2000 . The latter is of particular significance, given the author’s long-standing influence on the field and the summary and updating of his key arguments with respect to bilingualism and bilingual education in the text. Issues of the appropriate assessment of bilingual students also feature prominently (see also Assessment ).

Baker, Colin. 2011. Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism . Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.

This revised and updated best-selling textbook (now in its fifth edition) provides readers with a comprehensive introduction to bilingual education and bilingualism. It covers all of the critical issues related to bilingualism and also offers useful summaries, recommended further reading and study activities that supplement each chapter.

Baker, Colin, and Sylvia Prys Jones. 1998. Encyclopedia of bilingualism and bilingual education . Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

This comprehensive 500,000-word encyclopedia comprises four key sections: individual bilingualism, languages in society, languages in contact in the world, and bilingual education. Each section offers numerous textboxes, photographs, and graphics for those who are new to the area. Cross-referencing also allows the reader to access other information in the encyclopedia, while “Further Reading” sections at the end of each topic and a bibliography at the end of the encyclopedia lead the reader to information elsewhere.

Cummins, Jim. 2000. Language, pedagogy and power: Bilingual children in the crossfire . Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

This volume reviews the research and theory relating to instruction and assessment of bilingual pupils, focusing not only on issues of language learning and teaching but also on how wider power relations affect patterns of teacher-pupil interaction in the classroom.

García, Ofelia. 2009. Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective . Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

This valuable contribution to the literature provides a comprehensive examination of the principles and practice of bilingual education. It is written from a practitioner’s perspective, strongly endorsing bilingual education and informing readers on how best to implement it.

May, Stephen. 2008. Bilingual/immersion education: What the research tells us. In Bilingual education: The Encyclopedia of Language and Education . 2d ed. Vol. 5. Edited by J. Cummins and N. Hornberger, 19–34. New York: Springer.

This article-length overview of key research underpinning bilingual education is an excellent introduction to the field. May outlines what research has to say about the most effective bilingual education approaches; however, he also highlights how this research is regularly ignored, particularly by opponents of bilingual education in wider public and policy debates.

back to top

Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login .

Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here .

• About Education »
• Meet the Editorial Board »
• Academic Achievement
• Academic Audit for Universities
• Academic Freedom and Tenure in the United States
• Action Research in Education
• Adjuncts in Higher Education in the United States
• Administrator Preparation
• Adolescence
• Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Courses
• Advocacy and Activism in Early Childhood
• African American Racial Identity and Learning
• Alaska Native Education
• Alternative Certification Programs for Educators
• Alternative Schools
• American Indian Education
• Animals in Environmental Education
• Art Education
• Artificial Intelligence and Learning
• Assessing School Leader Effectiveness
• Assessment, Behavioral
• Assessment, Educational
• Assessment in Early Childhood Education
• Assistive Technology
• Augmented Reality in Education
• Beginning-Teacher Induction
• Bilingual Education and Bilingualism
• Black Undergraduate Women: Critical Race and Gender Perspe...
• Blended Learning
• Case Study in Education Research
• Changing Professional and Academic Identities
• Character Education
• Children’s and Young Adult Literature
• Children's Beliefs about Intelligence
• Children's Rights in Early Childhood Education
• Citizenship Education
• Civic and Social Engagement of Higher Education
• Classroom Learning Environments: Assessing and Investigati...
• Classroom Management
• Coherent Instructional Systems at the School and School Sy...
• College Admissions in the United States
• College Athletics in the United States
• Community Relations
• Comparative Education
• Computer-Assisted Language Learning
• Computer-Based Testing
• Conceptualizing, Measuring, and Evaluating Improvement Net...
• Continuous Improvement and "High Leverage" Educational Pro...
• Counseling in Schools
• Critical Approaches to Gender in Higher Education
• Critical Perspectives on Educational Innovation and Improv...
• Critical Race Theory
• Crossborder and Transnational Higher Education
• Cross-National Research on Continuous Improvement
• Cross-Sector Research on Continuous Learning and Improveme...
• Cultural Diversity in Early Childhood Education
• Culturally Responsive Teacher Education in the United Stat...
• Curriculum Design
• Data Collection in Educational Research
• Data-driven Decision Making in the United States
• Deaf Education
• Desegregation and Integration
• Design Thinking and the Learning Sciences: Theoretical, Pr...
• Development, Moral
• Dialogic Pedagogy
• Digital Age Teacher, The
• Digital Citizenship
• Digital Divides
• Disabilities
• Distance Learning
• Distributed Leadership
• Doctoral Education and Training
• Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) in Denmark
• Early Childhood Education and Development in Mexico
• Early Childhood Education in Aotearoa New Zealand
• Early Childhood Education in Australia
• Early Childhood Education in China
• Early Childhood Education in Europe
• Early Childhood Education in Sub-Saharan Africa
• Early Childhood Education in Sweden
• Early Childhood Education Pedagogy
• Early Childhood Education Policy
• Early Childhood Education, The Arts in
• Early Childhood Mathematics
• Early Childhood Science
• Early Childhood Teacher Education
• Early Childhood Teachers in Aotearoa New Zealand
• Early Years Professionalism and Professionalization Polici...
• Economics of Education
• Education For Children with Autism
• Education for Sustainable Development
• Education Leadership, Empirical Perspectives in
• Education of Native Hawaiian Students
• Education Reform and School Change
• Educational Statistics for Longitudinal Research
• Educator Partnerships with Parents and Families with a Foc...
• Emotional and Affective Issues in Environmental and Sustai...
• Emotional and Behavioral Disorders
• Environmental and Science Education: Overlaps and Issues
• Environmental Education
• Environmental Education in Brazil
• Epistemic Beliefs
• Equity and Improvement: Engaging Communities in Educationa...
• Equity, Ethnicity, Diversity, and Excellence in Education
• Ethical Research with Young Children
• Ethics and Education
• Ethics of Teaching
• Ethnic Studies
• Evidence-Based Communication Assessment and Intervention
• Family and Community Partnerships in Education
• Family Day Care
• Federal Government Programs and Issues
• Feminization of Labor in Academia
• Finance, Education
• Financial Aid
• Formative Assessment
• Future-Focused Education
• Gender and Achievement
• Gender and Alternative Education
• Gender-Based Violence on University Campuses
• Gifted Education
• Global Mindedness and Global Citizenship Education
• Global University Rankings
• Governance, Education
• Grounded Theory
• Growth of Effective Mental Health Services in Schools in t...
• Higher Education and Globalization
• Higher Education and the Developing World
• Higher Education Faculty Characteristics and Trends in the...
• Higher Education Finance
• Higher Education Governance
• Higher Education Graduate Outcomes and Destinations
• Higher Education in Africa
• Higher Education in China
• Higher Education in Latin America
• Higher Education in the United States, Historical Evolutio...
• Higher Education, International Issues in
• Higher Education Management
• Higher Education Policy
• Higher Education Research
• Higher Education Student Assessment
• High-stakes Testing
• History of Early Childhood Education in the United States
• History of Education in the United States
• History of Technology Integration in Education
• Homeschooling
• Inclusion in Early Childhood: Difference, Disability, and ...
• Inclusive Education
• Indigenous Learning Environments
• Indigenous Students in Higher Education in the United Stat...
• Infant and Toddler Pedagogy
• Inservice Teacher Education
• Integrating Art across the Curriculum
• Intelligence
• Intensive Interventions for Children and Adolescents with ...
• International Perspectives on Academic Freedom
• Intersectionality and Education
• Knowledge Development in Early Childhood
• Leadership Development, Coaching and Feedback for
• Leadership in Early Childhood Education
• Leadership Training with an Emphasis on the United States
• Learning Analytics in Higher Education
• Learning Difficulties
• Learning, Lifelong
• Learning, Multimedia
• Learning Strategies
• Legal Matters and Education Law
• LGBT Youth in Schools
• Linguistically Inclusive Pedagogy
• Literacy Development and Language Acquisition
• Literature Reviews
• Mathematics Identity
• Mathematics Instruction and Interventions for Students wit...
• Mathematics Teacher Education
• Measurement for Improvement in Education
• Measurement in Education in the United States
• Meta-Analysis and Research Synthesis in Education
• Methodological Approaches for Impact Evaluation in Educati...
• Methodologies for Conducting Education Research
• Mindfulness, Learning, and Education
• Mixed Methods Research
• Motherscholars
• Multiliteracies in Early Childhood Education
• Multiple Documents Literacy: Theory, Research, and Applica...
• Multivariate Research Methodology
• Museums, Education, and Curriculum
• Music Education
• Narrative Research in Education
• Native American Studies
• Note-Taking
• Numeracy Education
• One-to-One Technology in the K-12 Classroom
• Online Education
• Open Education
• Organizing for Continuous Improvement in Education
• Organizing Schools for the Inclusion of Students with Disa...
• Outdoor Play and Learning
• Outdoor Play and Learning in Early Childhood Education
• Pedagogical Leadership
• Pedagogy of Teacher Education, A
• Performance Objectives and Measurement
• Performance-based Research Assessment in Higher Education
• Performance-based Research Funding
• Phenomenology in Educational Research
• Philosophy of Education
• Physical Education
• Podcasts in Education
• Policy Context of United States Educational Innovation and...
• Politics of Education
• Portable Technology Use in Special Education Programs and ...
• Post-humanism and Environmental Education
• Pre-Service Teacher Education
• Problem Solving
• Productivity and Higher Education
• Professional Development
• Professional Learning Communities
• Program Evaluation
• Programs and Services for Students with Emotional or Behav...
• Psychology Learning and Teaching
• Psychometric Issues in the Assessment of English Language ...
• Qualitative Data Analysis Techniques
• Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Research Samp...
• Qualitative Research Design
• Quantitative Research Designs in Educational Research
• Queering the English Language Arts (ELA) Writing Classroom
• Race and Affirmative Action in Higher Education
• Reading Education
• Refugee and New Immigrant Learners
• Relational and Developmental Trauma and Schools
• Relational Pedagogies in Early Childhood Education
• Reliability in Educational Assessments
• Religion in Elementary and Secondary Education in the Unit...
• Researcher Development and Skills Training within the Cont...
• Research-Practice Partnerships in Education within the Uni...
• Response to Intervention
• Restorative Practices
• Risky Play in Early Childhood Education
• Scale and Sustainability of Education Innovation and Impro...
• Scaling Up Research-based Educational Practices
• School Accreditation
• School Choice
• School Culture
• School District Budgeting and Financial Management in the ...
• School Improvement through Inclusive Education
• School Reform
• Schools, Private and Independent
• School-Wide Positive Behavior Support
• Science Education
• Secondary to Postsecondary Transition Issues
• Self-Regulated Learning
• Self-Study of Teacher Education Practices
• Service-Learning
• Severe Disabilities
• Single Salary Schedule
• Single-sex Education
• Single-Subject Research Design
• Social Context of Education
• Social Justice
• Social Network Analysis
• Social Pedagogy
• Social Science and Education Research
• Social Studies Education
• Sociology of Education
• Standards-Based Education
• Statistical Assumptions
• Student Access, Equity, and Diversity in Higher Education
• Student Assignment Policy
• Student Engagement in Tertiary Education
• Student Learning, Development, Engagement, and Motivation ...
• Student Participation
• Student Voice in Teacher Development
• Sustainability Education in Early Childhood Education
• Sustainability in Early Childhood Education
• Sustainability in Higher Education
• Teacher Beliefs and Epistemologies
• Teacher Collaboration in School Improvement
• Teacher Evaluation and Teacher Effectiveness
• Teacher Preparation
• Teacher Training and Development
• Teacher Unions and Associations
• Teacher-Student Relationships
• Teaching Critical Thinking
• Technologies, Teaching, and Learning in Higher Education
• Technology Education in Early Childhood
• Technology, Educational
• Technology-based Assessment
• The Bologna Process
• The Regulation of Standards in Higher Education
• Theories of Educational Leadership
• Three Conceptions of Literacy: Media, Narrative, and Gamin...
• Tracking and Detracking
• Traditions of Quality Improvement in Education
• Transformative Learning
• Transitions in Early Childhood Education
• Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities in the Unite...
• Understanding the Psycho-Social Dimensions of Schools and ...
• University Faculty Roles and Responsibilities in the Unite...
• Using Ethnography in Educational Research
• Value of Higher Education for Students and Other Stakehold...
• Virtual Learning Environments
• Vocational and Technical Education
• Wellness and Well-Being in Education
• Women's and Gender Studies
• Young Children and Spirituality
• Young Children's Learning Dispositions
• Young Children's Working Theories
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Legal Notice
• Accessibility

Powered by:

• [66.249.64.20|195.158.225.230]
• 195.158.225.230

The Century Foundation The Century Foundation The Century Foundation

Who—and What—Is Bilingual Education For in the Twenty-First Century?

The United States has now enjoyed two decades of dual-language immersion (DLI) education programs in its public schools. The pedagogical model promises to improve the education outcomes of students for whom English is not their first or most proficient language while helping children from all language backgrounds become bilingual. Done well, DLI programs can also break down racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic segregation.

But it’s no simple thing to do this well. Concern dominated a recent convening at UCLA of leaders in the field, which was followed by a report that synthesized the findings and discussion: in practice, it looks like too many DLI programs may be actually exacerbating the very equity issues they were designed to address.

How did the DLI community get here? And what can this trend tell us about how to implement the model—and how not to implement it?

A Political Solution for Bilingual Education…

Odd as it may seem now, as recently as the late 1990s, bilingual education was in full retreat across the country. Anti-immigrant movements in Arizona, California, and elsewhere coalesced into a series of referenda in which voters decided to impose English-only mandates on public schools. In most cases, these made it nearly impossible—indeed, illegal —for schools to serve English learners in bilingual classroom settings.

This was nothing new, necessarily: bilingual education’s roots in the United States stretch at least a century deep, and this was hardly the first wane driven by English-dominant communities’ cultural anxieties.

Bilingual education in these states had been largely segregated . For the most part, the programs were designed for native speakers of non-English languages (predominantly Spanish). This narrow academic purpose also limited their political constituency. Specifically, native English speakers generally had no direct stake in them, which left many voters (at best) ambivalent about them, and left the programs politically vulnerable.

DLI could, in essence, resuscitate bilingual education by sharing its fruits with a wider range of students.

Dual-language immersion arose from the resulting defeats. They offered a way out: these classrooms would enroll students of diverse linguistic backgrounds, English-dominant and English-learning students alike. Ideally, this linguistic integration would drive stronger academic outcomes, richer multilingual learning, and some broader political investment. DLI could, in essence, resuscitate bilingual education by sharing its fruits with a wider range of students. What’s more, by including native speakers of each language in bilingual classrooms, two-way DLI programs could launch truly bilingual learning environments that would foster better linguistic and academic development across the board.

After twenty years of promoting themselves thus, dual-language immersion (DLI) programs have grown from an occasional oddity in a handful of public schools to a movement with momentum. A new report out of UCLA’s Civil Rights Project outlines DLI’s tantalizing promise: “There is limited but growing evidence that supports the argument that instruction in two languages from early grades produces higher academic achievement in core academic content…tested in English, especially for English language learners.”

…With Pedagogical Consequences

With two decades of DLI program development and growth underneath the country’s belt, some of the consequences of its political strategy are now coming clear. Last December, a group of DLI researchers, advocates, and educators convened at UCLA to take stock of how well DLI is delivering on the equity promises that accelerated its rise. As a researcher who has long been curious about DLI’s potential, I was eager to attend.

Last month, the forum’s lead conveners, the UCLA Civil Rights Project’s Patricia Gándara and National Dual Language Immersion Research Alliance’s Robert Slater, published the aforementioned report , summarizing the forum’s two days of discussions. The paper makes clear that access concerns are the primary equity concern for DLI going forward. In other words, DLI’s political advantages have become pedagogical liabilities.

Here’s how that’s happened: the programs tried to build a new (English-dominant) political constituency for bilingual education under the banner of “Multilingualism for All,” only to discover that, in practice, this increasingly means providing only English immersion for English learners (ELs) and multilingual DLI instruction for English-dominant students. Instead of ushering in an era when English-learning students have more access to schools that can help them maintain and grow their emerging bilingualism, DLI programs may be launching—or, worse, may have already launched—an era that primarily offers multilingualism to English-dominant and higher-privilege communities.

A bird’s eye view of the DLI landscape hints at this apparent trend. Much of DLI’s growth in the past twenty years has been in the establishment of “one-way” programs that primarily serve English-dominant children. For instance, Utah has launched nearly 200 new DLI programs since 2008; but the large majority of these programs are one-way programs. In other cities and states, DLI schools begin as two-way programs, but gradually shift as interest from English-dominant families increases. In Washington, D.C., where two-way DLI programs have been steadily growing more English-dominant for years, a new bill before the DC Council would launch eight new DLI schools while specifically prohibiting leaders from considering whether the new programs would serve ELs. Each new school year brings new examples like these.

The problem is fundamentally structural. U.S. public schools customarily determine school enrollment and access by means of real estate markets. Given that EL students and their families are more likely than English-only households to live below the poverty line , they often have less power to choose or retain access to particular schools—including those that offer DLI. In many cases, then, English-dominant families simply have more material resources that they can wield to displace ELs and their families from neighborhoods and schools. Even in other systems that determine school enrollment , privileged, English-dominant families frequently find ways to tilt access towards their children.

In essence, as the UCLA report puts it, “DLI offers the promise not only to level the playing field for students but to transform schools and school districts through ‘purposeful integration’ of partner language speakers (immigrant and U.S.-born) and English speakers…perhaps even shifting populations that might help reverse trends that include increased segregation of Latinx and immigrant populations.” And yet, that potential is nothing certain. The report warns, “The ideal [two-way DLI] model is a balance of 50% English and 50% partner language speakers…The effort to enroll and appease parents of English speakers by allowing programs to become unbalanced, or the practice of tipping the enrollment balance toward speakers of the partner (e.g. Spanish) language significantly impacts the power of the two-way model.”

Sign up for updates.

Components limiting dli growth.

To be sure, “Multilingualism for All” is a laudable educational goal. It only poses an equity problem when 1) there’s a shortage of available multilingual school seats, and 2) the available seats are allocated to members of historically privileged communities at the cost of access for EL students (who, research shows , uniquely benefit from learning in their native language as they learn English ).

Unfortunately, though, at present, there are real structural limits on the growth of quality DLI programs. The UCLA paper aptly summarizes some of the forum’s discussions on this score.

First and foremost, DLI growth is limited by shortages of qualified bilingual teachers. The U.S. teaching force is largely monolingual and English-dominant. Precise data on this are scarce, but we do know that only around one in eight U.S. teachers speaks a non-English language at home, compared to nearly one-quarter of U.S. children.

There are many reasons for this, but U.S. teacher licensure policies play a role. In most states, linguistically-diverse teacher candidates face multiple obstacles to becoming licensed. Most states require teacher-candidates to pass a licensure assessment in English, even if they will be teaching and working predominantly in another language. State licensure systems do not always recognize credentials that immigrant educators have earned overseas.

There are workarounds—DLI schools can hire foreign teachers. But these teachers are generally only permitted to work in the country for three years . Constantly replacing them is costly. Also, teachers trained overseas in other countries’ education systems often face a steep learning curve when engaging with the U.S. public education system.

Schools can also hire non-native speakers of the non-English target language (English-dominant adults who studied Mandarin in college, for instance). But these teachers may not have the depth of language proficiency and/or breadth of vocabulary to effectively model and transmit language proficiency for all students.

There are other, more permanent solutions. For instance, districts can build alternative teacher training pathways designed to help bilingual teacher-candidates become licensed. Furthermore, traditional teacher training programs at colleges and universities can build partnerships with their institutions’ foreign language departments. Indeed, there is scarce evidence that teacher licensure systems provide meaningful quality control for determining the quality of states’ bilingual teaching forces. The UCLA report paraphrases a forum participant thus: “There is no consensus in the field about how exactly to best prepare bilingual teachers to address the burgeoning need.”

Expanding bilingual teacher training pipelines is only the first step we need to take to advance equity in DLI, however. The UCLA paper identifies a range of next-order equity problems for these schools. High-quality, culturally rich multilingual curricula are rare. Unproven DLI educational materials—especially education technology—are common. Teacher and administrator linguistic and cultural biases too often shape the tracks that DLI programs take.

These challenges suggest that DLI’s many goals—political and pedagogical—are in tension with one another.

Above all, these challenges suggest that DLI’s many goals—political and pedagogical—are in tension with one another. Consider the daunting list of proposed DLI goals. Dual-language immersion programs promise to advance English learners’ linguistic and academic development, help develop ELs’ pride in their cultural identities, allow a diverse range of students to become bilingual and biliterate, support school integration, close achievement gaps, aid in immigrant integration processes, diversify the teaching force, and improve bilingual education’s political fortunes.

The report notes all of these DLI priorities, and highlights how this breadth of priorities hampers efforts to improve the actual quality and equity of DLI programs. For instance, policies to foster linguistic, racial, and socioeconomic integration may not always be perfectly compatible with policies to improve ELs’ linguistic development and academic outcomes. What’s more, none of the foregoing may work smoothly with efforts to raise the political appeal of DLI. Slater and Gándara, the report’s authors, noted that, in a survey of thirty-two dual-language immersion administrators (across twenty-three states) conducted to accompany their report, they found “a broad recognition of the critical importance of equity, but also a degree of uncertainty as to the depth and breadth of equity issues and their potential impact on DLI programs.”

The paper, and the forum it synthesizes, are encouraging first steps towards clarifying what DLI is for, and how programs can work towards that objective. But if DLI programs are to deliver on their many political promises without undermining their pedagogical purposes, it’s important that those steps don’t end the field’s journey.

Tags: dual language education , bilingual education

Conor P. Williams, Senior Fellow

Conor P. Williams is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, where he writes about education, immigration, early education, school choice, and work-life balance challenges for American families. He is an expert on American educational inequity, English learner students, dual immersion programs, urban education reform, and the history of progressivism.

Anti-DEI Bill in Texas Is a Warning for Other States

The National Newcomer Network’s Policy Platform

The Bilingual Glow-Up: Why More Black Students Need Access to Language Programs in D.C.

How a Kentucky School Exclusively for Newcomers Navigated the Pandemic

Achieving Educational Equity for New York City’s Newcomer Students

Unlocking Potential: Expanding Public Montessori as a Path to Equitable Education

Encyclopedia of Language and Education pp 1483–1498 Cite as

Bilingual/Immersion Education: What the Research Tells Us

• Stephen May 3  
• Reference work entry

3193 Accesses

13 Citations

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...

• Language Policy
• Minority Language
• Bilingual Education
• Indigenous Language
• Bilingual Student

These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Andersson, T. and Boyer, M.: 1970, Bilingual Schooling in the United States: Vol. 1, Southwest Educational Development Laboratory, Austin, TX.

Google Scholar  

Baetens B.H. (ed.): 1993, European Typologies of Bilingual Education , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Baker, C.: 2006, Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (fourth edition) , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Baker, C. and Prys, J.S.: 1998, Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Baker, K. and de Kanter, A.: 1981, Effectiveness of Bilingual Education: A Review of the Literature , US Department of Education, Washington, DC.

Baker, K. and de Kanter, A. (eds.): 1983, Bilingual Education: A Reappraisal of Federal Policy , Lexington Books, Lexington, MA.

Barnard, R. and Glynn, T.: 2003, Bilingual Children's Language and Literacy Development: New Zealand Case Studies , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Cloud, N., Genesee, F., and Hamayan, E.: 2000, Dual Language Instruction: A Handbook for Enriched Education , Thomson Heine, Boston.

Crawford, J.: 1989, Bilingual Education: History, Politics, Theory and Practice , Crane Publishing Co., Trenton NJ.

Crawford, J.: 2000, At War with Diversity. US Language Policy in an Age of Anxiety , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Cummins, J.: 1979, ‘Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of bilingual children’, Review of Educational Research 49(2), 222–259.

Cummins, J.: 1996, Negotiating Identities: Education for Empowerment in a Diverse Society , California Association for Bilingual Education, Toronto.

Cummins, J.: 2000, Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Cummins, J.: 2003, ‘Bilingual education’, in J. Bourne and E. Reid (eds.), Language Education: World Yearbook of Education , Evans Bros, London, 3–19.

Danoff, M., Coles, G., McLaughlin, D., and Reynolds, D.: 1978, Evaluation of the Impact of ESEA Title VII Spanish/English Bilingual Education Program , American Institutes for Research, Palo Alto, CA.

de Courcy, M.: 2002, Learners’ Experiences of Immersion Education: Case Studies in French and Chinese , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

de Mejia, A.: 2002, Power, Prestige and Bilingualism: International Perspectives on Elite Bilingual Education , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Dicker, S.: 2003, Languages in America (second edition), Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Fishman, J.: 1976, Bilingual Education: An International Sociological Perspective , Newbury House, Rowley MA.

Fishman, J.: 1992, ‘The displaced anxieties of Anglo‐Americans’, in J. Crawford (ed.), Language Loyalties: A Source Book on the Official English Controversy , University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 165–170.

Freeman, R.: 1998, Bilingual Education and Social Change , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Freeman, R.: 2004, Building on Community Bilingualism , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Genesee, F., Lindholm‐Leary, K., Saunders, B., and Christian, D.: 2006, Educating English Language Learners: A Synthesis of Research Evidence , Cambridge University Press, New York.

Hakuta, K., Butler, G., and Witt, D.: 2000, How Long Does it Take Learners to Attain English Proficiency? , University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute, Santa Barbara, CA.

Hamers, J. and Blanc, M.: 2000, Bilinguality and Bilingualism , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Heller, M.: 1999, Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography , Longman, London.

Hinton, L. and Hale, K.: 2001, The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice , Academic Press, San Diego.

Hornberger, N.: 1988, Bilingual Education and Language Maintenance: A Southern Peruvian Quechua case , Mouton, Berlin.

Hornberger, N.: 1991, ‘Extending enrichment bilingual education: Revisiting typologies and redirecting policy’, in O. García (ed.), Bilingual Education: Focusschrift in Honor of Joshua A. Fishman , John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam.

Johnson, R. and Swain, M. (eds.): 1997, Immersion Education: International perspectives , Cambridge Applied Linguistics, Cambridge.

Jones, B. and Ghuman, P.: 1995, Bilingualism, Education and Identity , University of Wales Press, Cardiff.

King, K.: 2001, Language Revitalization Processes and Prospects: Quichua in the Ecuadorian Andes , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Lindholm‐Leary, K.: 2001, Dual Language Education , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

May, S.: 1994, Making Multicultural Education Work , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

May, S.: 2001, Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language , Longman, London and New York, Reprinted by Routledge, 2007.

May, S.: 2005, ‘The politics of homogeneity: a critical exploration of the anti‐bilingual education movement’, in J. Cohen, K. McAlister, K. Rolstad, and J. MacSwan (eds.) ISB4:Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Bilingualism , Cascadilla Press, Somerville, MA, 1560–1566.

May, S. and Hill, R.: 2005, ‘Maori‐medium education: current issues and challenges’, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 8(5), 377–403.

May, S., Hill, R., and Tiakiwai, S.: 2004, Bilingual/Immersion Education: Indicators of Good Practice. Final Report to the Ministry of Education , Ministry of Education, Wellington. Retrieved from http://www.minedu.govt.nz/index.cfm ?layout = document&documentid = 9712&data = l on 20 August 2006.

McCarty, T.: 2002, A Place to be Navajo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self‐Determination in Indigenous Schooling , Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.

McGroarty, M.: 2002, ‘Evolving influences on education language policies’, in J. Tollefson (ed.), Language Policies in Education: Critical issues , Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ, 17–36.

McGroarty, M.: 2006, ‘Neoliberal collusion or strategic simultaneity? On multiple rationalse for language‐in‐education policies’, Language Policy 5, 3–13.

Article   Google Scholar  

Pérez, B.: 2003, Becoming Biliterate: A Study of Two‐Way Bilingual Immersion Education , Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.

Ramírez, J., Yuen, S., and Ramey, D.: 1991, Final Report: Longitudinal Study of Structured English Immersion Strategy, Early‐Exit and Late‐Exit Transitional Bilingual Education Programs for Language‐Minority Children , Aguirre International, San Mateo, CA.

Ricento, T.: 1996, ‘Language policy in the United States’, in M. Herriman and B. Burnaby (eds.), Language Policies in English‐Dominant Countries , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, England, 122–158.

Rossell, C. and Baker, K.: 1996, ‘The effectiveness of bilingual education’, Research in the Teaching of English 30, 7–74.

Skutnabb‐Kangas, T.: 1981, Bilingualism or Not: The Education of Minorities , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Skutnabb‐Kangas, T.: 2000, Linguistic Genocide in Education‐or Worldwide Diversity and Human Rights? , Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.

Thomas, W. and Collier, V.: 1997, School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students , National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education, Washington, DC.

Thomas, W. and Collier, V.: 2002, A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students’ Long‐Term Academic Achievement , Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence (CREDE), Santa Cruz.

Tollefson, J. and Tsui A. (eds.): 2004, Medium of Instruction Policies: Which agenda? Whose Agenda? , Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ.

Valdés, G., Fishman, J., Chávez, R., and Pérez, W.: 2006, Towards the Development of Minority Language Resources , Multilingual Matters, Clevedon.

Wiley, T.: 2001, ‘On defining heritage language education and their speakers’, in J. Peyton, D. Ranard, and S. McGinnis (eds.), Heritage Languages in America: Preserving a national resource , Delta Systems, McHenry, IL.

Willig, A.: 1985, ‘A meta‐analysis of selected studies on the effectiveness of bilingual education’, Review of Educational Research 55, 269–317.

Willig, A.: 1987, ‘Examining bilingual education research through meta‐analysis and narrative review: A response to Baker, Review of Educational Research 57, 363–376.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Education, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105, Hamilton 3240, New Zealand

Stephen May

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, 19104-6216, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Nancy H. Hornberger

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC

About this entry

Cite this entry.

May, S. (2008). Bilingual/Immersion Education: What the Research Tells Us. In: Hornberger, N.H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_113

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_113

Publisher Name : Springer, Boston, MA

Print ISBN : 978-0-387-32875-1

Online ISBN : 978-0-387-30424-3

eBook Packages : Humanities, Social Sciences and Law

Share this entry

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser or activate Google Chrome Frame to improve your experience.

Immersion Bilingual Education: What It Is and How to Implement It Successfully

In a way, immersion bilingual education should be the goal of every language teacher.

After all, immersion most closely mimics the way we learn our first language. And in teaching students a second language, we are already creating a bilingual setting to some degree.

But the nuts and bolts of bringing a bilingual immersion model to life in a classroom or a school can be elusive.

How does the teacher create an immersive environment for a new language while utilizing students’ native language ?

Read on for an overview of immersion bilingual education models, how to determine which is right for your situation, tips for implementing your program and how to measure its success.

What Is Immersion Bilingual Education?

How to determine which immersion bilingual model to use, tips for implementing immersion bilingual education, signs of a successful immersion bilingual program.

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 set the precedent that students must be able to access education equally, regardless of language barriers.

Unfortunately, bilingual education has not always met its full potential when it has been implemented. Without a clear vision, educators have struggled with the reality and practicalities of it.

Confusion often arises because “immersion” and “bilingual education” are two different things!

Immersion is a particular type of language teaching in which the target language is the content and the medium of instruction. In other words, it is both the vehicle for learning and the package that is delivered—you learn the language by receiving instruction in the language.

There are three widely accepted immersion models:

• Total immersion: 100% of the school day is in the target language.
• Partial immersion: Half of the instruction is in the target language and half is in the students’ native language.
• Two-way immersion: Students receive instruction in both their native and target languages.

Typically, partial immersion involves students who speak the same native language. The two-way model, on the other hand, means that students of different language backgrounds are combined in one classroom, accessing the same content together.

You can probably already see how immersion and bilingual education can be related now.

Bilingual education  effectively means that students receive instruction in two languages. For example, classes might be taught in Spanish for part of the day and then in English for another part of the day.

There are four classic models of bilingual education:

• Transitional: This model aims to leave the students’ native language completely behind and fully embrace the target language.

Understanding these different models of immersion and bilingual learning is important as you try to decide what your goals are and how best to meet them.

The benefits of immersion bilingual education are many. The success of this language learning method is well-documented : It can improve students’ attention span and reading ability, and make them more empathetic .

Besides, immersion bilingual education meets all the criteria for effective teaching and learning: It is student-centered, task-oriented and equitable.

Problems with immersion bilingual education arise because teachers often lack the training and/or resources to make the method effective.

To choose an immersion bilingual education model that works for your situation, you can start by considering these questions about staff requirements and support of the program:

Communicate with parents regularly via meetings, emails and phone calls to make sure that they understand your goals. Give them information on the value of immersion bilingual education programs, especially if this will be a totally new endeavor.

Next, carefully consider students’ curriculum targets and how their immersion learning might affect their overall academics:

Lastly, you’ll want to be clear on the logistics of the program and how you’ll measure and achieve goals:

Any textbooks, worksheets or resource materials need to reflect your goals. If your goal is a two-way immersion program, then any materials should be written in the language of instruction.

For example, if Art is taught in French, then all textbooks and examples for that class should be in French. If Social Studies is taught in Spanish, then all materials should be in Spanish.

I recommend that you learn more about CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning)  for other considerations to guide you as you construct your immersion program.

If you’re trying to get an immersion bilingual education program off the ground, don’t feel overwhelmed! Here are some guidelines to help:

• Seek out the knowledge of colleagues and experts.  Collaborate with subject area teachers . Your colleagues are a wealth of information. Another great resource is other schools that have successful immersion bilingual education programs. Observe their classes and chat with instructors.
• Come up with creative themes and subjects.  What about putting Mandarin Chinese vocabulary to a tune as part of a music class? Or learning Spanish through word problems in math? You can also combine teaching art with language. And if you’re feeling inspired, your students will too.
• Keep it task oriented. The magic of immersion and bilingual teaching is that they get you away from traditional memorization drills and instead immerse the students in a more realistic learning setting. Keep classroom tasks relevant and focused on those of real life—consider activities like role plays, presentations and cooking classes.
• Use visuals.  Infographics, posters, drawings, signs, slideshow presentations…these will all help you hold your students’ interest and make lessons more memorable. You can even use a virtual immersion program such as FluentU to show level-appropriate target language videos to your students alongside tools like multimedia flashcards and personalized quizzes.
• Celebrate success.  Immersion bilingual education is hard, so reward yourselves for progress. Incorporate celebrations of individual and group success into the routine life of the classroom, and watch your students’ motivation soar!

You picked an immersion bilingual education model and got it up and running. So how can you tell if your program is truly succeeding? Here are the signs of an effective program:

• The administration and staff are supportive and knowledgeable.  Ask anyone that works in your school about your initiative for immersion bilingual education and they’ll be able to tell you what it is and why it is of value to the students.
• The teachers are highly qualified. All of the teachers involved in the program are qualified in their subject matter.
• The vision has been clearly communicated.  Everyone understands the curriculum and model, and all your fellow travelers know the final destination.
• There are many opportunities for parent involvement. Parents are invited to volunteer and are frequently informed of student progress, so they feel like a part of the process.
• The classroom is structured.  Discipline and orderly routines help students feel less chaotic as they try to navigate the unpredictable world of language acquisition.

The benefits of bilingual and immersion education are endless!

Don’t be intimidated by a lack of knowledge from reaping these benefits.

All you need is some intentionality and a little enthusiastic collaboration to give your students an added edge not just in language learning, but in other disciplines, too.

Enter your e-mail address to get your free PDF!

We hate SPAM and promise to keep your email address safe

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of bilingual education in English

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio

• He is a controversial educational leader known for his fierce opposition to bilingual education .
• They argue that without bilingual education , students with limited English skills will fall further behind in math , history , and science .
• The candidates debated whether more tax dollars should be allotted to bilingual education services .
• abstinence education
• abstinence program
• abstinence-only
• academically
• adaptive learning
• homeschooler
• homeschooling
• intersession
• special educational needs
• virtual learning environment
• vocationally

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

Word of the Day

throw your voice

to make something that is not real, such as a toy, seem to be speaking

Paying attention and listening intently: talking about concentration

Learn more with +Plus

• Recent and Recommended {{#preferredDictionaries}} {{name}} {{/preferredDictionaries}}
• Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English English Learner’s Dictionary Essential British English Essential American English
• Grammar and thesaurus Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English Grammar Thesaurus
• Pronunciation British and American pronunciations with audio English Pronunciation
• English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
• English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
• English–Dutch Dutch–English
• English–French French–English
• English–German German–English
• English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
• English–Italian Italian–English
• English–Japanese Japanese–English
• English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
• English–Polish Polish–English
• English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
• English–Spanish Spanish–English
• English–Swedish Swedish–English
• Dictionary +Plus Word Lists
• English    Noun
• All translations

Add bilingual education to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

{{message}}

Something went wrong.

There was a problem sending your report.

• Search Menu
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Acquisition
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Media
• Music and Religion
• Music and Culture
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Lifestyle, Home, and Garden
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Politics
• Law and Society
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Medical Ethics
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Security
• Computer Games
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Ethics
• Business Strategy
• Business History
• Business and Technology
• Business and Government
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic History
• Economic Systems
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Theory
• Politics and Law
• Public Policy
• Public Administration
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Developmental and Physical Disabilities Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

20 Bilingual Education

Colin Baker is pro vice chancellor at the University of Wales, Bangor. He is the author of 15 books and over 50 articles on bilingualism and bilingual education, with specific interests in language planning and bilingual education. His book Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (Multilingual Matters, 1993, 1996, 2001, 2006) has sold over 50,000 copies and has been translated into Japanese, Spanish, Latvian, Greek, Vietnamese, and Mandarin. His Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (with S. P. Jones, Multilingual Matters) won the British Association for Applied Linguistics Book Prize Award in 1999. He edits three Multilingual Matters Book Series and is editor of the International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. In addition to his academic activities, Colin Baker has held three U.K. government appointments. He can be reached at http://[email protected].

• Published: 18 September 2012
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

Bilingual education is not just about education and bilingualism. There are dimensions to bilingual education that require a multidisciplinary understanding. It is not just about the use of two languages in the classroom. There are dimensions to bilingual education that involve economics, philosophy, history, sociolinguistics, and, not least, politics as well as language planning. For example, bilingual education is a means of language planning that sometimes seeks to assimilate indigenous and immigrant minorities, or to integrate newcomers or minority groups. At other times, bilingual education is a major plank in language revitalization and preservation. There is the viewpoint of language planners is one essential means of language maintenance, revitalization, and reversing language shift. The benefits of bilingual education are not self-apparent or intrinsically obvious. Therefore, the notion of bilingual education has to be marketed so that both the public and politicians are persuaded and convinced.

Introduction

Bilingual education is not just about education and bilingualism. There are dimensions to bilingual education that require a multidisciplinary understanding. It is not just about the use of two languages in the classroom. There are dimensions to bilingual education that involve economics, philosophy, history, sociolinguistics, and, not least, politics as well as language planning. For example, bilingual education is a means of language planning that sometimes seeks to assimilate indigenous and immigrant minorities, or to integrate newcomers or minority groups. At other times, bilingual education is a major plank in language revitalization and preservation.

This means that politics is rarely absent from debates about bilingual education. Indeed, there is no understanding of international bilingual education without contextualizing it within the history and politics of a country (e.g., United States) or a region (e.g., Wales in the United Kingdom) or a state (e.g., New York, Arizona, California). Bilingual education can be fully understood only in relation to political ideology and political opportunism. Also, the increasing politicization of bilingual education has led to such key economic questions as whether the bilingual education option is expensive, cost efficient or cost effective.

Pedagogic, language planning, political, and economic perspectives are not the only perspectives on bilingual education. There are public (opinion), sociolinguistic, psychological, historical, and individual national perspectives (Baker, 2006 ; McCarty, 2004 ; Cummins and Hornberger, 2008 ). Also, any individual perspective is capable of extension into components (e.g., pedagogy into teaching methodology, learning strategies, curriculum resourcing, teacher training, and school organization) and overlap and interact (e.g., language planning and economics interact with politics).

Four major perspectives on bilingual education are presented.

1. Bilingual Education as Language Planning

First, there is the viewpoint of language planners (e.g., in Wales, Ireland, Catalonia, and the Basque country) who believe that bilingual education is one essential means of language maintenance, language revitalization, and reversing language shift. In this perspective, bilingual education is part of a framework for language revitalization.

For a language to survive and revive, it has to be lived and loved. Daily language use and a consistently favorable attitude to a language are all important. Imagine a minority language with rights to use enshrined in law, with radio and television, web pages, and computer programs in that minority language and bilingual signage, and yet everyone using the majority language at home, when experiencing the mass media, in leisure and in religious activities, in employment, and in all daily social interaction. It is theoretically possible to have many support systems for a language but for the language to be dying because it is not used in families and communities. Therefore, at the heart of language planning is planning for reproduction and usage. This suggests that language rights, mass media, signposts, and many other strategies and actions are not of first-order importance in themselves. Although each contributes to the status and institutionalization of a language, they are ultimately important to the extent to which they contribute to four priorities:

1. Language acquisition in the family 2. Language learning from preschool education through formal schooling to adult education 3. Using the minority language for economic purposes 4. Social, cultural, and leisure participation through the minority language

Minority languages decline when families fail to reproduce the language in their children. Where and when much higher proportions of older people speak a minority language than younger age groups, the language is imperiled. Where and when younger age groups are in larger proportions than older speakers of the language, a positive sign for the future of the language is present. Thus, family language planning is a top priority, quintessential but insufficient by itself. The family plants the seed and ensures early growth. The blossoming requires cultivation in bilingual education, the employment market, and social/cultural life.

For language planning to be successful, language learning in school is important to make up for a shortfall in language transmission at the family level and to increase the stock of minority language speakers. Language acquisition in preschool education, in elementary and high schools, at higher education levels, and in adult language learning classes becomes the lifeline to increase the supply of minority-language speakers. Language planning through bilingual education has succeeded in the Basque Country, Canada, Catalonia, and Wales, for example, and becomes a necessary but insufficient foundation, by itself, for language revitalization.

The case of Ireland signals a warning. The creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 made Irish the first official language of the country, and Irish was made compulsory in schools, compulsory to pass as a subject in order to matriculate from school, and compulsory for entrance to much public sector employment and to university. Despite constant state intervention and economic schemes to support the Irish language, the Irish language has declined in daily usage.

One reason for the decline in the Irish Language, despite language rights and central language planning, has been the lack of a strong economic dimension to Irish. Children leaving school found that the Irish was of little real value in most of the employment market. For many jobs, Irish was practically irrelevant. Instead, schoolchildren, their parents, and students in Ireland have become increasingly aware of the economic advantages of the European Union languages, particularly French, German, Spanish, and English. The economic value of a language is not the only determinant of its value and usefulness, but it is a crucial factor.

The more a minority language is tied in with employment, promotion in employment, and increasing affluence, the greater the perceived value and status of that language. The greater the number of jobs that require bilingualism (and often biliteracy), the more importance a minority language will have in the curriculum. Thus, an economic value to a minority language provides needed instrumental motivation for children to become proficient in that language in school.

The more a minority language is aligned with employment and the economy, the more parents may become motivated and encouraged to reproduce that language among their children. A strong economic value to a language gives added momentum for language reproduction in the family. It also gives momentum to preschool efforts for language acquisition—that is, learning the language when very young in an informal, subconscious, and enjoyable fashion.

The danger of promoting only the economic value of a minority language is that it may have short-term monetary associations. There is a possibility of doing the right thing for a temporary reason. Once economic motives are fulfilled, a minority language may not be used. For a language to be of increased value and to be used daily, it has to capture particular contexts (domains) in which people's noneconomic activity occurs. For a language to survive and multiply, it has to be used regularly in everyday interaction and relationships, in many positive aspects of cultural, leisure, and community life. The widest form of cultural participation needs to be encouraged, from festivities to discos, the rites and rituals of religion to the rhythms of rock music, from sports events to quiet group hobbies and pastimes.

When there is valued cultural and leisure use of a minority language, then language reproduction in the family becomes more encouraged and motivated. In the same way, language production through education becomes more meaningful when it is seen that a minority language has an enjoyable use in cultural and leisure activity.

Literacy in a minority language is also important for that language to live into the future. Any language lacking a literacy component in this century may be in grave danger of not surviving. Literacy in a minority language gives many more uses and functions to that language (e.g., in employment, leisure reading). A language lacking a literacy component is like a colonized language. When the British colonized areas of Africa and India, they frequently allowed literacy solely in the English language. The indigenous languages were relegated to lower status, noneconomic uses; English was the key to educational wisdom, employment, and wealth. Thus, a language lacking a literacy component has many fewer functions and much less status. Bilingual education has a crucial function in promoting biliteracy (except when there is a strong religious promotion of a literacy—e.g., in a mosque or synagogue).

The language planner's view of bilingual education necessarily focuses on the importance of producing more speakers of a minority language than are generated through the parents and the home. A language planner's view of bilingual education necessarily focuses on strengthening the minority language among first language speakers and on majority language children learning a minority language as a second language as early as possible and becoming fluent in that minority language so as to operate in the curriculum of the primary and secondary school. Also, a language planner's view of bilingual education is for a minority language culture to permeate throughout the formal and hidden curriculum. Thus a “minority language” cultural dimension added to every curriculum area becomes important to a language planner in giving a language rootedness, identity, and connectedness at a cognitive and affective level with the kaleidoscopic colors of a minority-language culture.

However, there are three particular overlapping limitations of the language planning perspective of bilingual education that need mentioning.

There is a danger in the language planner's perspective in regarding bilingual education as for the sake of the language and not necessarily for the sake of the child. Bilingual education can be seen as a salvation for the language, whereas an alternative (but not a contradictory) viewpoint is that a minority language education is for the sake of the child. A humanistic educationalist may argue that bilingual education needs to be defended for its value and contribution to the development of the child rather than the language.

The language planning perspective on bilingual education tends to have a limited view of the functions and purposes of education. Among both supporters and critics of bilingual education there are arguments that separate and artificially dissociate debates about language from debates about effective education. We shall be returning to this theme later in this chapter when the politics of bilingual education are considered.

There is sometimes overoptimism among language planners about what can be expected from, and delivered by, bilingual education in revitalizing a language. When a language fails to be reproduced in the family, and when there are insufficient support mechanisms (e.g., language rights, mass media) outside of schools, too high expectations of language reversal via bilingual education are not uncommon. Although bilingual education has an important role in language reproduction—and probably without it a minority language cannot survive except through intergenerational family language or intense religious usage—bilingual education cannot deliver language maintenance by itself.

2. Bilingual Education as Pedagogy

Although bilingual education consists of many different types (see Baker, 2006 ), it has recently been greeted as typically superior to monolingual education (e.g., in achievement across the curriculum, in raising the self-esteem of language minority children, in producing bilingualism, biliteracy, and interculturalism). Although the critics of bilingual education (e.g., the anti-Latino lobby in the United States and the assimilationists in the United Kingdom) must not be underestimated, the philosophy, principles, policies, and practices of bilingual education have grown remarkably vibrant in recent decades. Educationalists have increasingly considered the value of two or three majority languages in schools, not just taught as languages but used to transmit curriculum content. For example, China, Scandinavia, and many Far East countries are increasingly seeing the importance of languages in the global market, and in intercontinental communication and information exchange, while educators interested in minority languages argue for the benefits of bilingual education as standard raising, child-centered, and responsive to parents and pupils as clients.

Among educationalists, arguments for bilingual education vary according to local politics and the status and power of majority and minority languages, but tend to revolve around eight particular advantages of bilingual education (Baker, 2007 ):

Bilingual education allows both languages (sometimes three languages) to develop fully. Rather than engaging in token second language learning, two or more languages are well developed. This allows children to engage in wider communication, having more options in patterns of communication across generations, regions, and cultural groups, and provides linguistic capital.

Bilingual education develops a broader enculturation and a wider and more sympathetic view of different creeds and cultures. Rather than token multicultural lessons, bilingual education gives deep insights into the cultures associated with the languages, fosters a broader understanding of differences, bequeaths cultural capital, and, at its best, avoids the tight compartmentalization of racism—the stereotyping of different social groups—and fosters a more multiperspective and sensitive-to-difference viewpoint.

Bilingual education often generates biliteracy. Being able to read and write in two or more languages allows more possibilities in uses of literacy (e.g., in employment), widening the choice of literature for pleasure, giving more opportunities for different perspectives and viewpoints, and leading to a deeper understanding of history and heritage, of traditions and territory.

Research suggests that when children have two well-developed languages, they enjoy certain cognitive benefits (Bialystok, 2001 ). Schools are often important in developing a child's two languages to the point where they may be more creative in thinking owing to their bilingualism and be more sensitive in communication because they may be interpersonally aware, for example, when needing to codeswitch and be able to inspect their languages more (that is, they enjoy metalinguistic advantages).

In heritage language education (developmental maintenance bilingual education) children's self-esteem may be raised. When a child's home language is replaced by the majority language, the child, the parents, and the child's community may seem to be rejected. When the home language is used in school, then children may feel themselves, their home, and community to be accepted, thus maintaining or raising their self-esteem. Positive self-esteem—a confidence in one's own ability and potential—interacts in an important way with achievement and curriculum success (Baker, 2006 ).

Not only Canadian immersion studies and dual language schools in the United States but also studies of developmental maintenance bilingual education suggest that curriculum achievement is increased through such education (Baker, 2006 ). The precise causes of raising standards via bilingual education are neither simple nor straightforward. There is likely to be a complex equation among the support of the home, the enthusiasm and commitment of teachers in school, the quality of the school, children feeling accepted and secure, and the relationship between language and cognitive development. All of these, and many other variables, act and interact in the complex equation of success in bilingual education.

The role of bilingual education in establishing security of identity at a local, regional, and national level may be important. As a basic psychological need, security and status in self-identity may be important. For example, bilingual education has aided the establishment of a Welsh identity in Welsh children.

The economic advantages of bilingual education are increasingly being claimed, particularly in jobs that require a customer interface and communications with bilinguals or multilinguals. Being bilingual can be important to secure employment in many public services and sometimes in niche private companies as well. To secure a job as a teacher, to work in the mass media, to work in local government, and increasingly in the civil service in areas such as Canada, Wales, the Basque Country, bilingualism has become important. Thus, bilingual education is increasingly seen as delivering relatively more marketable employees than monolingual education.

Although bilingual education worldwide has an increasing number of supporters (albeit not without some virulent critics, especially in the United States; see Cummins, 2000b ), there are limitations in the pedagogical view of bilingual education. For example, bilingual education is no guarantee of effective schooling. Occasionally, there is a naiveté among those who support bilingual education in assuming that employing two or more languages in the school curriculum automatically leads to a raising of standards, to more effective outcomes, and to a more child-centered education. In reality, the languages of the school are but part of a wider matrix of variables that interact in complex ways to make schooling more or less effective. Among bilingual schools in every country, there appears to be a mixture of the outstanding and the ordinary, those in an upward spiral of enhancing their quality and those that depend on past glories rather than current successes. Bilingual education is only one ingredient among many.

Another limitation of the pedagogical perspective on bilingual education is the type and use of language learned at school. Canadian research suggests that the language register of formal education does not necessarily prepare children for language use outside the school (Cummins, 2000a ). The language of the curriculum is often complex and specialized. The vernacular of the street may be different. Canadian children from English-speaking homes who have been to immersion schools and learned through the medium of French and English sometimes report difficulty in communicating appropriately with French speakers in local communities. Local French speakers may find their French too formal, inappropriate, or even off-putting.

A further concern about bilingual education is that language learning may stop at the school gates. The minority language may be effectively transmitted and competently learned in the classroom. However, once outside the school gates, children may switch into the majority language. Thus, the danger of bilingual education in a minority language is that the language becomes a language of school but not of play, a language of the content delivery of the curriculum but not of peer culture. Even when children are taught through the medium of a minority language at school, the common denominator language of the peer group in the street is often a majority language. When one child turns to English, often so does everyone else. The language of the screen, shop, or street may be different from the language of the school. Extending a minority language learned at school to use in the community is something that is difficult to engineer and difficult to plan but nevertheless vital if the language is to live outside the school gates.

3. Bilingual Education as Politics

Wherever bilingual education exists, politics is close by. To assume that bilingual education is educationally justified and therefore, ipso facto , must be strongly supported is naive. Bilingual education is not simply an educational issue. Behind bilingual education there are always expressions of political ideology, tides of political change, and political initiative. To argue for bilingual education solely as a strong plank of language planning and language revitalization is simplistic. Language planning itself is predicated on language politics. Behind what might be posed as conservation of the threatened languages of the world lie other, more basic political assumptions and ideologies. Surrounding bilingual education are usually political debates about national identity, dominance and control by elites in power, power relationships among politicians and civil servants, questions about social order and social cohesion, and the perceived potential subversiveness of language minorities.

Cummins 1999 ) argued that research on bilingual education has become so unfocused, has sent out so many mixed messages, and in particular is so ignorant of underlying theory that politicians can selectively use research to fit and support their ideology. He contends that research reviews and meta-analyses (see Baker, 2006 ) all assume that research reviews can directly inform policy making. Cummins sees this as naive, owing to the “myriad human, administrative, and political influences that impact the implementation of programs over time” (Cummins, 1999 : 26). There are hundreds of variables that affect program outcomes so that research cannot, by itself, directly inform policy, provision, and practice. Rather, Cummins 1999 ) argues that it is tested theory that should drive policy making. That is, research should commence from theoretical propositions, testing, refining, and sometimes refuting those propositions.

In complex educational and other human organizational contexts, data or “facts” become relevant for policy purposes only in the context of a coherent theory. It is the theory rather than the individual research findings that permits the generation of predictions about program outcomes under different conditions (Cummins, 1999 : 26).

However comprehensive and elaborate are the theoretical foundations of bilingual education, however strong are the educational arguments for bilingual education, and however strong are the arguments for the preservation of dying languages in the world, it is the politics of power, status, assimilation, and social order that can deny bilingual education so readily.

4. The Economic Perspective on Bilingual Education

A highly original and essential economic perspective comes from Dutcher 2004 ), who analyzes developmental maintenance bilingual education through cost-effectiveness and cost-efficiency. In a World Bank paper on the use of first and second languages in elementary education, Dutcher 2004 ) examines international evidence from Haiti, Nigeria, the Philippines, Guatemala, Canada, New Zealand, the United States (Navajo), Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and Western Samoa. She concludes that development of the mother tongue is critical for cognitive development and as a foundation for learning the second language. That is, submersion and transitional models of bilingual education are internationally less effective in developing a child's thinking abilities. When such development is slowed considerably by learning in a second language (e.g., submersion), then the second language will itself be learned more slowly.

Dutcher 2004 ) concludes that the recurrent costs for bilingual education are approximately the same as for traditional programs. Bilingual education is not an expensive option, having similar costs to mainstream programs. However, the most important conclusion is that developmental maintenance bilingual education creates cost savings for the education system and for society. For example, such bilingual education provides higher levels of achievement in fewer years of study. Student progress is faster, and higher achievement benefits society through less unemployment and a more skilled workforce.

In submersion and transitional models of bilingual education, there may be costs to a national economy due to slower rates of progress at school, lower levels of final achievement, and sometimes the need for special or compensatory education. Higher dropout rates mean lower potential for the employment market, and the economy suffers with a lower level of skills among the workforce and higher unemployment rates. In economic terms, students need to gain productive characteristics through education, and Dutcher 2004 ) indicates that this is achieved through early use of the native language.

Such cost-efficiency of developmental maintenance bilingual education is exemplified in a World Bank cost-effectiveness study on Guatemala, where Dutcher 2004 ) found that bilingual education was a prudent policy. Repetition and dropout rates were decreased through a bilingual education intervention program, and standards of achievement rose (including in Spanish). It was estimated that education cost savings due to bilingual education were US$5.6 million per year, whereas cost benefits were in the order of US$33.8 million per year. Also, individual earnings rose by approximately 50%. In Guatemala, developmental maintenance bilingual education made economic sense because it produced a more skilled, highly trained, and employable workforce. Submersion and transitional forms of bilingual education in comparison tend to have higher dropout rates and lower levels of achievement and thus have less chance of serving and stimulating the economy through a skilled workforce.

5. Conclusion

This chapter has suggested that bilingual education derives its raison d'tre not only from a concern for language maintenance and revitalization but also from a variety of educational, economic, social, cultural, and political factors. An idealistic conclusion would be to suggest the possibility of integrating the five perspectives. When there can be a wholeness in the four perspectives between language planners, bilingual educationalists, and the politicians who influence the growth of bilingual education, then a mature, logical, rational, and smooth evolution in bilingual education is possible. However, it is apparent in this chapter that, more often than not, there is a separation between the perspectives. Each is a partial view, a view that could be enlightened and expanded by understanding the perspective of another. All four perspectives are present in international bilingual education.

In particular, educationalists who support bilingual education need to understand the politics behind, and sometimes against, bilingual education for there to be movement forward. The defense and expansion of bilingual education cannot come suddenly from language planning perspectives (language planning acquisition) or through purely stating the many and real advantages of bilingual education. Bilingual education may flourish or otherwise through the locus of political power, through the movement of political ideology, and through political influence. This is where language planners and educationalists in support of bilingual education can join forces. The future fortunes of bilingual education are open to political influence. The benefits of bilingual education are not self-apparent or intrinsically obvious. Therefore, the notion of bilingual education has to be marketed so that both the public and politicians are persuaded and convinced.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Bilingual Education - Definition, Types, Characteristics | Why is Bilingual Education Important?

June 22, 2022 by Prasanna

Bilingual education is nothing but teaching the academic syllabus to students in two different languages. Usually, educators teach students in their native language and second language in the classroom. Bilingual education helps students to develop multiple skills in the second language. Continue reading to know the importance of bilingualism, its history, types, advantages and disadvantages in academics from this page.

What is Bilingual Education?

Benefits of bilingual education, types of bilingual education, what are the challenges of bilingual education, bilingualism pros and cons, faqs on bilingual education.

Bilingual Education is the process of using two different languages in classroom instructions. It is a two-way or dual language immersion. The main intention of this program is to teach students the native (English) language along with the second (non-English) language.

During this systematic program, the teachers teach the academic subjects in both languages as per the instructions in the academic program. After the completion of the course, the students are able to speak, read, write, and listen the second language.

Bilingualism not only helps students master both languages but also improves their understanding of every culture. The goal is students should be able to communicate in both languages.

In the modern world, bilingual education plays an important role and offers various benefits to the younger generations. It enables students to learn two languages. The potential benefits are increased mental flexibility, improved intercultural skills, and increased opportunities for global exchange and trade.

Global Citizens People who learn two languages are invaluable in today's world. They can find employment opportunities throughout the world.

Psychological Benefits Another benefit is you can translate words from one language to another easily. So that students can understand the concept and they can act as translators between the two.

Language Proficiency Students are able to communicate in two languages perfectly.

Understanding Cultures Bilingual is about understanding cultures. People combine, and blend aspects of the cultures that are living, making linguistics, and cultures as per the needs.

Career Opportunities People who have bilingual education have more career opportunities than monolingual. They can get employment in both languages across the world.

Improved Memory The students who study bilingual education score the highest marks compared to monolingual.

Also, Check

• Affordable Universities in USA for International Students
• How to Study for MCAT

Here mentioned are the several different types of bilingual education program models.

Immersion Bilingual Education Immersion is a type of bilingual education where subjects are taught in the student's second language. Here the subject is entirely taught in the second language. There are different facets of immersion in schools.

Transitional Bilingual Education It involves education in the student's native language. When the student's English proficiency is deemed satisfactory.

English as a Second Language In a few schools, the English language is selected as the second language. Students are learning English as a second language because English has been assigned communicative status in the country.

Late-exit or Developmental Bilingual Education In this model, the education is in the student's native language for an extended duration. The main goal is to improve literacy in the primary language and transfer these skills into the second language.

Effects of mother-tongue instruction Education in their mother tongue and other languages has proven essential for their personal and educational development.

• People may have a lot of questions when considering bilingual education for their children.
• Few people see bilingual education as needed proficiency in the second language, whereas others think of it as developing skills in the second language.
• Students learning education through a second language need to be systematically supported over a period of 5 to 10 years in developing skills by using academic language.
• In few cases, bilingual education is for the whole school.
• Bilingual education is a different program and it requires researching, designing, planning, monitoring and evaluation.

Here we are providing the Bilingual Education pros and cons details.

Advantages of Bilingual Education

• It offers cultural awareness
• You may be able to work abroad
• Personal development
• Improves automatic adaption of new languages
• Improve mental strength
• May be interested to learn new things
• Gain better career options
• Easy to participate in exchange programs

Disadvantages of Bilingual Education

• You may feel difficult at the starting
• It needs more learning time
• It can be costly
• Not so many schools offer this system
• You can provide less time for other activities
• May increase stress levels of students
• Higher administrative and planning efforts
• Lack of qualified teachers

The main goal of bilingual education is to enable English language learners to become proficient in reading, speaking, and writing in the English language through literacy development and academic skills in the native language and English.

The different bilingualism characteristics are here:

• An English language development component
• High expectations for students and clear programmatic goals, and many more.

The types of bilingual education program models are immersion bilingual education, transitional bilingual education, English as a second language, effects of mother-tongue instruction, late-exit or developmental bilingual education.

Students with a bilingual education system will achieve more scores than monolinguals on the number of tests of solving tasks, non-verbal problems, and mental flexibility.

A Glossary of Bilingual-Education Terms

• Share article

An excess of oversimplified and often misleading program labels complicates the debate over the effectiveness of bilingual education.

For example, transitional bilingual education, English as a second language, and immersion are typically described as discrete “methods’’ of teaching limited-English-proficient children. In practice, however, there is much overlap among the three educational treatments--indeed, some of the most successful bilingual models draw techniques from all three. At the same time, there is enormous variation among programs classed under each of these labels.

To follow the pedagogical debate, a clear understanding of terms is essential. The following glossary is drawn principally from Bilingual and ESL Classrooms, a leading text used in bilingual-teacher training, by Carlos J. Ovando and Virginia P. Collier.

In transitional bilingual education , LEP children study English in classes specially designed for second-language learners and receive a portion of their instruction in their native language to help them keep up in school subjects. The goal is to prepare students to enter mainstream English classrooms as soon as possible, and this transition is usually completed within two years.

By law, the bulk of federal Title VII grants must support the transitional approach. But the legal definition of transitional bilingual education is broad, requiring only that some native language and culture be used, along with ESL instruction.

Contrary to the public perception of transitional bilingual education as a foreign-language program, studies have shown that English is the medium of instruction from 72 percent to 92 percent of the time. In a recent California study, teachers used no native language at all in 47 percent of the so-called “bilingual classrooms’’ observed.

Unlike transitional programs, maintenance or developmental bilingual education attempts to preserve and develop the students’ first language while they are adding a second. In other words, maintenance programs are based on an educational enrichment model; transitional programs, on a compensatory model. “In the maintenance model, there is less emphasis on exiting students from the program as soon as possible,’' according to Mr. Ovando and Ms. Collier. Typically, native-language classes continue through the 6th grade, although most subjects may be taught in English. Developmental bilingual classrooms at the high-school level are relatively rare in the United States.

The goal of language maintenance is additive bilingualism , which provides cognitive, as well as social and economic advantages, according to some researchers. By contrast, subtractive bilingualism --the attempt to replace a child’s native language with English--is associated by many researchers with low levels of development in both languages, and with underachievement in school.

Maintenance programs may also function as two-way bilingual education , which Mr. Ovando and Ms. Collier define as “an integrated model in which speakers of [two] languages are placed together in a bilingual classroom to learn each other’s language and work academically in both languages.’' Most common in the United States are programs that simultaneously teach Spanish to English-background children and English to Hispanics, while developing native-language skills for both groups.

In immersion programs, children are taught a second language through content-area instruction in that language, with an emphasis on contextual clues and with grammar and vocabulary adjusted to students’ level of proficiency. The key is providing comprehensible input , or understandable messages through which children acquire the second language as they learn other academic subjects.

Immersion must be distinguished from submersion , also known as “sink or swim,’' in which LEP children receive no special language assistance. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1974, in the Lau v. Nichols case, that submersion violates federal civil-rights law.

Enrichment-immersion programs have been widely successful among language-majority children, such as French immersion in Canada, or Spanish immersion in the United States, in which English-speakers are taught initially in the second language.

The U.S. Education Department has promoted an approach known as structured immersion , a monolingual English strategy for teaching language-minority children. This method differs from submersion, because a simplified form of English is used as the medium of instruction, and in some immersion models, teachers are capable of answering--in English--questions posed by children in their native tongue.

Lacking substantial evidence from the United States, proponents have cited the success of French immersion programs in Canada in arguing that structured immersion is a promising alternative to bilingual education. But the researchers who designed French immersion have warned that this approach is inappropriate and potentially harmful for minority students, whose native tongue is in danger of being replaced because of its low social status.

Alternate immersion , also termed sheltered English , is a component of many bilingual programs. Children receive sheltered instruction--geared to their level of English proficiency--sometimes at first in subjects that are less language-intensive, such as mathematics, and later in subjects that are more so, such as social studies.

In other program models, lessons are taught in the native language in the morning and through English immersion in the afternoon, or the lessons may be repeated on alternate days. The preview-review method , frequently used in a team-teaching situation, features lessons taught first in one, then the other, language, followed by a review session in both languages to reinforce what has been learned.

Concurrent translation , in which a teacher shifts between two languages to communicate each idea, is still the predominant method of bilingual instruction in the United States. Many researchers, however, arguing that children simply ignore the language they do not understand, have criticized this approach. Also, they warn, teachers tend to favor one language or the other, often unconsciously.

Worst of all, the concurrent-translation method can encourage a regressive form of code-switching --or a mixing of the two languages--which can retard children’s development in both.

Other concurrent approaches attempt to avoid these problems by training teachers, among other things, to monitor their language use and to avoid code-switching within sentences. With such adjustments, the approach could work, says Stephen D. Krashen, a leading theorist of second-language acquisition. “But the concurrent approach is tough on the teacher; it’s unnecessary, and [sheltered English] is a safer way of doing it,’' he says.

English as a second language is a component of virtually all bilingual-education programs in the United States. And because of a shortage of bilingual teachers, for many LEP children it is the only special assistance available. Especially in districts where many language groups are represented, students may receive ESL instruction only through “pullout classes’’ a few times each week. The rest of the time, it is sink or swim.

With ESL, as with bilingual instruction, methods vary tremendously. The most common approaches remain grammar-based , such as the audio-lingual method , which emphasizes memorization of vocabulary and drills in “the structure of the week.’' The grammar-translation approach , an older, less-used method, concentrates on learning a language by perfecting reading and writing skills, with less attention to listening and speaking.

While grammar-based ESL has produced students who can formulate grammatically perfect sentences--given enough time--it has often failed to make them proficient communicators, according to many researchers. And the tedious content of instruction, for students and teachers alike, appears to impede learning.

Increasingly, communication-based ESL is superseding the old methods. The new approaches are grounded in the theory that language proficiency is acquired through exposure to comprehensible messages, rather than learned consciously through the study of syntax and vocabulary.

Representative of such innovative methods, the natural approach and total physical response stress simplified speech and visual or physical clues to help students comprehend second-language input. Also, they aim to create low-anxiety environments that “lower the affective filter '' that prevents comprehensible input from getting through. For example, teachers focus on meaningful and interesting communication, resist the impulse to correct students’ errors overtly, and avoid pressuring children to “produce’’ speech in the second language before they are ready.

A version of this article appeared in the April 01, 1987 edition of Education Week as A Glossary of Bilingual-Education Terms

Sign Up for EdWeek Update

Edweek top school jobs.

Sign Up & Sign In

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• HHS Author Manuscripts

Bilingual education for young children: review of the effects and consequences

Ellen bialystok.

Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

Bilingual education has been an educational option in many countries for over 50 years but it remains controversial, especially in terms of its appropriateness for all children. The present review examines research evaluating the outcomes of bilingual education for language and literacy levels, academic achievement, and suitability for children with special challenges. The focus is on early education and the emphasis is on American contexts. Special attention is paid to factors such as socioeconomic status that are often confounded with the outcomes of bilingual education. The conclusion is that there is no evidence for harmful effects of bilingual education and much evidence for net benefits in many domains.

In the US, bilingual education has been a controversial topic almost since the founding of the nation, and from the beginning, the discussions were imbued with political rhetoric (for reviews see Nieto 2009 ; Ovando 2003 ). The Bilingual Education Act of 1968 recognized the situation of minority children with limited proficiency in English and created funding for programs that would assist these children to succeed in American schools and develop their proficiency in both English and their home language. The act was largely focused on Spanish speakers, but subsequent groups, such as Chinese speakers, brought about amendments to the act to expand its scope ( Lau vs. Nichols, 1974 ). Other countries have had a different experience with bilingual education and a different set of political and social associations with these programs. A prime example is Canada, where the social, demographic, and political situations were different from those in the US. Although Canada is officially a bilingual country, there is not a single language that defines most bilinguals as there is in the US, because the majority of bilinguals in Canada speak one of the official languages (English or French) and a heritage language. Surprisingly, few citizens are actually proficient in both official languages. In the 2011 census, about 17% of respondents stated they could conduct a conversation in both English and French, a considerable increase from the estimate of 12% who could achieve this in 1961 ( Lepage and Corbeil 2013 ), although still below what would be expected in a bilingual society. One factor that may be responsible for the growth in French-English bilingualism over the 50-year period is the impact in the past generation of popular French immersion programs in which children who would otherwise have had little exposure to French became very proficient and in many cases, fully bilingual.

In Europe, attitudes to languages, educational systems, and bilingualism in general, to name a few factors, are very different from those in North America. Garcia (2011) makes a strong case for the widespread appropriateness of bilingual education globally, but the context in which education takes place is crucial; there is no universal prescription for bilingual education and no universal outcomes. As Baker (2011) points out, the perspective on bilingual education depends largely on the point of view, and studies conducted in one context may have little relevance for bilingual education in another context. Therefore, this review will focus primarily on North American contexts and address some of the central issues regarding the efficacy of bilingual education for that region, in particular for the US.

Finally, the review will focus on the early school years because they are the foundation for academic outcomes. Education is a long-term process and results continue to influence outcomes throughout life. However, the early years are crucial for establishing basic skills and attitudes toward education, so the examination of bilingual education in the present review will focus on the first three years of schooling. To summarize, the review is restricted in that it selectively reviews studies whose empirical properties are considered sufficiently reliable to form conclusions, with a focus on primary education in the context in the US, and addressing specific questions, namely, language outcomes, cognitive outcomes, and generalized appropriateness of the programs.

Bilingual education is an umbrella terms that encompasses a range of education programs that have been designed for an even wider range of children and a host of special circumstances. Essentially, bilingual education refers to any school program in which more than one language is used in the curriculum to teach non-language academic subject matter or the language of schooling does not match the language of the home or community, but the reasons for incorporating the languages, the specific languages chosen, the structure of the program, and the relation between the school languages and the community vary widely and influence educational outcomes. Over-riding all this is the distinction between ‘bilingual education’ and the ‘education of bilingual children’, concepts that are importantly different from each other. Consider the following two definitions for bilingual education. Genesee (2004 , 548) defined bilingual education as ‘education that aims to promote bilingual (or multilingual) competence by using both (or all) languages as media of instruction for significant portions of the academic curriculum’. In contrast, Rossell and Baker (1996 , 7) defined bilingual education as ‘teaching non-English-speaking students to read and write in their native tongue, teaching them content in their native tongue, and gradually transitioning them to English over a period of several years’. Clearly these definitions are describing different situations and carry different goals.

This distinction between bilingual education and the education of bilingual children is part of the historical difference between the development of bilingual education in the US and elsewhere. For bilingual education of minority language students in the US, the motivation was to create an educational program for children who were at-risk of academic failure because of low proficiency in English, the language of schooling, by engaging them in the education process through the use of their home language (e.g. including Spanish in the education of Hispanic children). The success of these programs was judged primarily by proficiency in English (the majority language), with the main criterion being English language literacy. For bilingual education in Canada, in contrast, the motivation was to offer an educational alternative designed to make majority language children (i.e. English speakers) bilingual. Thus, success of these programs was judged by the extent to which children mastered the minority language while maintaining proficiency in the majority language. Similar immersion programs were developed for children to gain proficiency in both national (e.g. children of Finnish immigrants in Sweden, Troike 1978 ) and heritage languages (e.g. Hawaiian programs in the US, McCarty and Watahomigie 1998 ; Navajo programs in the US, Rosier and Holm 1980 ; Maori programs in New Zealand; Durie 1998 ; May and Hill 2005 ). All these programs fall under the general rubric of bilingual education but are importantly different from each other. A more complete range of the diversity of bilingual education programs is described by Fishman (1976) and more recently by Mehisto and Genesee (2015) .

In spite of substantial differences between them, the two goals of educating bilingual children and creating programs to make children bilingual are interrelated. In the US, there is large overlap between them because the largest number of bilingual education programs was developed to educate bilingual or limited English proficient (EP) students, primarily Spanish-speaking, who were otherwise at-risk for school failure. The present review will focus on bilingual education in general and not on the specific issues involved in the education of this particular group of children (for a detailed discussion of this issue, see August and Shanahan 2006 ). Ultimately, it is important to know if education through two languages is viable, if young children can learn in this kind of an environment, and if the outcomes of these programs meet the needs of all children. The present paper reviews evidence relevant for those judgments.

Development of language and literacy in bilingual education

Evaluation of the effectiveness of bilingual education on language and literacy outcomes requires well-controlled research. The clearest evidence for the unique contribution of bilingual education programs to these outcomes would come from randomized control trials, but such a design is almost impossible to achieve (but see Genesee and Lindholm-Leary 2012 , for discussion). The closest design to this methodological ideal is in studies that investigate bilingual education programs for which spaces are allocated by lottery because of over-demand so that comparisons can be made between children who were admitted to the program and those who were not. Children in this latter group generally enter regular classrooms and may remain on a waiting list. Even here, however, there is the possibility of bias in terms of who enters the lottery. The results of the few studies that have had the opportunity to compare these populations (e.g. Barnett et al. 2007 ) are largely consistent with the majority of the literature in which children in bilingual or single language programs are compared on critical outcome measures.

The primary goal of early schooling is to establish the foundational skills upon which children will build their educational futures. The most important of these abilities are language and literacy competence. Not surprisingly, therefore, the majority of research that has evaluated bilingual education programs has focused on children’s development of these crucial linguistic abilities. The research is complicated because the type of education program is only one of many factors that shape these emerging abilities so clear evidence for the role of the education program as distinct from other sources of variance in the child’s background requires carefully controlled designs. For example, children who are Hispanic but are native speakers of English have education outcomes in terms of dropout rates and academic failure that are similar to Hispanic children who are Spanish-speaking, ruling out English proficiency as the explanation ( Forum for Education and Democracy 2008 ). Just as English proficiency alone cannot explain school outcomes, neither can the educational program.

In part for this reason, conclusions regarding the development of language and literacy through bilingual education in the US is complicated by the confounding of ethnicity and social class with Spanish proficiency and bilingualism (for discussion see Francis, Lesaux, and August 2006 ). Nonetheless, two studies by Lindholm-Leary and colleagues have provided reasonably clear results on these issues. In one study, Lindholm-Leary and Block (2010) assessed the English and mathematics achievement of 659 Hispanic students attending either mainstream English or various types of bilingual programs in California. In the bilingual schools, the proportion of instruction shifted from predominantly Spanish to predominantly English over the period from kindergarten to fourth grade. Students were classified as EP or English Language Learner (ELL) prior to the study. The main result was that standard scores on the English proficiency test were higher for both ELL and EP students who were in the bilingual programs than they were for children in the mainstream English programs. Similar results were found for scores on the mathematics test. Overall, students in the dual language program in this low socioeconomic status (SES) community achieved at least as well and in some cases better in both English and mathematics than did comparable students in a program in which all instruction was in English. Students in the bilingual programs also made more rapid progress across the grades in these tests than did students in the English program and, therefore, were more advanced in their trajectory to close the achievement gap with statewide norms for these tests.

In a similar study that included children in kindergarten through second grade, Lindholm-Leary (2014) assessed 283 low SES Hispanic children in either English or bilingual programs. Children entering the English kindergarten programs had higher language scores than those entering the bilingual programs, but these differences disappeared within one or two years and then reversed, with children in the bilingual program outperforming the English-only instruction group in both English and Spanish test scores by the end of second grade. Not surprisingly, children in the English program showed significant loss of Spanish proficiency, making them in fact less bilingual, a topic that will be discussed below.

Barnett et al. (2007) compared performance of low SES preschool children (3 and 4 years old) in bilingual or English-only programs, but importantly, children were assigned to these programs by lottery, thereby controlling to some extent for pre-existing differences among the children or their families. The programs were in a school district in which 76% of the children qualified for free or reduced-price lunch. The outcome measures were largely experimental tasks that assessed phonological awareness and language knowledge (primarily vocabulary), but the results were consistent with those reported in other studies. Specifically, children in both programs made comparable progress in skill development in English, but children in the bilingual program also developed these skills in Spanish, indicating that dual language instruction did not impede development of English, the L2.

In these examples, bilingual instruction had long-term benefits for children’s language and literacy proficiency in both languages. In a review and meta-analysis of this literature, Francis, Lesaux, and August (2006) concluded that ‘bilingual education has a positive effect on English reading outcomes that are small to moderate in size’ (392). Thus, overall, bilingual education for Hispanic children in the US leads to English outcomes that are equivalent to those found for children in mainstream English programs, with better outcomes for Spanish.

These results are broadly consistent with those found for bilingual education programs serving other communities, with other languages, in other countries, where students are more likely to belong to majority language groups than minority language, as in the US. Thus, the outcomes obtained with children at risk for educational failure produce patterns of results similar to those found for children with entirely different linguistic and demographic backgrounds. The most studied of these programs is Canadian French immersion in which Anglophone children in Canada are educated through French. Results of studies over the past 50 years have shown that English outcomes are equivalent to or better than those found for children in English programs (even though most instruction is in French in the primary grades) and French outcomes are moderate to high, although below levels found for native-speaking French children ( Genesee 1983 , 2004 ; Hermanto, Moreno, and Bialystok 2012 ; Swain and Lapkin 1982 ).

Three further examples with similar results come from bilingual programs operating in Italian and English, Mandarin and English, and Hebrew and Russian. Assessment of the Italian-English program was a small-scale study in which 60 children attending this program in California were evaluated from first through third grades for language and literacy ability in English and Italian ( Montanari 2013 ). Results showed that these children developed strong literacy skills in both Italian and English by first grade, even though instruction was exclusively in Italian. The second program, also implemented in California, provided instruction through Mandarin beginning in kindergarten to children who either had Mandarin exposure at home or were only English speaking ( Padilla et al. 2013 ). Like the Italian-English program, this was a small-scale study. The results showed that all children gained proficiency in both English and Mandarin and importantly achieved at least equivalent and sometimes greater than state levels on standardized tests of English, math, and science in spite of being educated through Mandarin. Finally, two studies investigated language and literacy development in Russian-Hebrew bilingual 4-year-olds who were attending either bilingual Hebrew-Russian or Hebrew schools in Israel, where Hebrew is the majority language. Again, the results showed that children in the bilingual programs developed language proficiency ( Schwartz 2013 ) and narrative skills ( Schwartz and Shaul 2013 ) in Hebrew, the majority language, at least as well as did children in the Hebrew only programs and at the same time maintained higher levels of Russian. Across all these studies, therefore, the majority language of the community was mastered whether or not it was the primary language of instruction, but the minority language required environmental support to reach high proficiency levels.

The studies that compared English-only and bilingual education in Hispanic children were generally conducted with low SES populations, but that is not the case for the non-Spanish programs: children in the Italian-English program were described as ‘middle class’; children in the Mandarin-English program were described as ‘upper middle class’; and children in the Hebrew-Russian program were described as ‘mid-level socioeconomic’. Thus, even though none of the students was at-risk in the manner generally understood for Hispanic children in Spanish-English bilingual programs, the patterns of language and literacy outcomes were similar, even if the absolute levels of achievement were different. Therefore, there is no evidence that education through two languages impedes progress in the development of language and literacy skills in the majority language and has the added benefit of developing and sustaining these skills in the minority language. This generalization about positive outcomes is confirmed by a study in which at-risk low performing children attending bilingual education or majority language English-only programs were compared for their English language and literacy performance ( Lopez and Tashakkori 2004 ). There was no evidence of additional burden on the development of English skills for children in the bilingual program.

Other academic and cognitive achievements

However important language and literacy are for children’s development, they are not the only outcomes that need to be considered in evaluating educational options for children. The impact of education through a weak or non-proficient language on children’s academic success has long been a concern. Dire warnings about harmful effects of these programs were expressed by Macnamara (1967) in his evaluation of children attending an Irish immersion program in Ireland. He reported that children in the Irish program performed more poorly in mathematics than did children in regular English programs, but he neglected to point out that the differences were found only in mathematics ‘word’ problems and not in mathematical operations. Unsurprisingly, children’s knowledge of Irish at that point was weak and interfered with their comprehension of the test questions; in tests of arithmetic calculations, there were no differences between groups. These challenges have been known for a long time (e.g. Cummins and Macnamara 1977 ) but the research remained influential. More recent research demonstrates that even simple arithmetic calculation is faster and easier in the language in which it was taught ( Spelke and Tsivkin 2001 ) and engages different parts of the brain than when the same calculations are performed in the non-school language ( Mondt et al. 2011 ), but the Irish proficiency of the children in Macnamara’s (1967) study may have been too weak to show this effect.

Other studies have generally found no academic cost for children studying in a bilingual program. In the Mandarin-English bilingual education program described above ( Padilla et al. 2013 ), for example, children in the dual language immersion and the English programs performed equivalently on standardized tests of mathematics until third grade, but immersion children began outperforming non-immersion children in fourth grade. Thus, these program effects sometimes take time to demonstrate. For tests of science achievement, there were no differences between children in the two programs.

There is evidence that bilingualism alone, aside from bilingual education, may be beneficial for aspects of academic achievement. Han (2012) conducted a longitudinal study in the US of a national cohort of over 16,000 children in kindergarten and followed their academic progress until fifth grade. Because of national education policies requiring standardized testing on English literacy and math scores, large data bases are available for such investigations. In the study by Han (2012) , the children included in the analyses were Hispanic, Asian, or non-Hispanic native-born White and outcome variables were results on standardized reading and math achievement scores. Although the analyses did not explicitly control for the effect of education program, the quality of education was defined in terms of the resources and interventions for English support available in the school program, quality of the teachers, and other such factors and included in the analyses. The results were based on a complex classification of children according to their language abilities. Most relevant is a group called ‘mixed bilingual’, referring to children who spoke a non-English language at home to a high degree of fluency. Although these children entered kindergarten with limited English proficiency and obtained initial scores on both English and math tests that were lower than native English-speaking children, they fully closed the math gap by fifth grade, an achievement that the Han attributes to bilingualism. Nonetheless, English scores still lagged by fifth grade. The focus of the analyses were on quality of school programs, availability of resources, and quality of school personnel, all of which contributed significantly to children’s success. The study was not designed to evaluate the effectiveness of bilingual education but the results are consistent with the conclusion that children’s bilingualism can be a positive factor in school achievement.

Much of this research has focused on children in low SES environments, but Marian, Shook, and Schroeder (2013) extended the question to investigate whether these results would be similar for Spanish-speaking low SES children and monolingual English-speaking middle-class children who were in Spanish-English bilingual programs and were instructed through Spanish from kindergarten. The numbers of children in each of the relevant groups defined by language and social background, grade, and education program were vastly different (ranging from 6 to 624), so non-parametric analyses were used and results need to be interpreted cautiously. The analyses of children’s performance on standardized tests of reading and mathematics showed better outcomes for children in bilingual programs than monolingual programs for both minority Spanish and majority English-speaking children, although there were differences in the size and timing of these effects for children from the two language backgrounds. Thus, all children profited from the bilingual education program, although not surprisingly their progress depended as well on other factors known to affect education outcomes.

One explanation that Marian and colleagues offer for the better mathematics outcomes for children in the bilingual programs is that the bilingualism achieved in these programs led to higher levels of executive function and that better executive function was the mechanism for the improvement in math performance. Several studies of young children in the early grades have demonstrated a direct relationship between children’s executive functioning and mathematics achievement ( Blair and Razza 2007 ; Bull, Espy, and Wiebe 2008 ) and a large body of research has established that bilingualism promotes the development of executive function in young children (see Barac et al. 2014 for review; Adesope et al. 2010 for meta-analysis). Importantly, children’s level of executive functioning predicts academic success ( Best, Miller, and Naglieri 2011 ; McClelland, Morrison, and Holmes 2000 ), and academic success predicts long-term health and well-being ( Duncan, Ziol-Guest, and Kalil 2010 ). Therefore, bilingual education may have a serendipitous effect in that it not only promotes bilingualism but also enhances a crucial aspect of cognitive performance.

There is a large and growing literature investigating the relation between bilingualism and executive functioning in young children, but three studies are particularly relevant. The first study is interesting because the results were unexpected. Mezzacappa (2004) used the children’s Attention Network Task ( Fan et al. 2002 ) to assess executive functioning in 6-year-old children who varied in SES (middle-class or low) and ethnicity (White, African-American, or Hispanic). In addition to expected effects of SES, he found that Hispanic children outperformed the other groups, particularly on the most difficult condition. Although he did not collect information about children’s language proficiency or level of bilingualism, he noted that 69% of the Hispanic children spoke Spanish at home, making them at least somewhat bilingual. Mezzacappa proposed that this bilingualism was responsible for the superior executive function performance by children in that group.

The second study was a relatively small-scale study that examined children from low SES communities in which about 90% of children received free or reduced-price lunch. Esposito and Baker-Ward (2013) administered two executive function tasks to children in kindergarten, second grade and fourth grade who were in a bilingual education or English-only program. Their results showed that children in second and fourth grades in the bilingual program outperformed children in the English program on the trail-making task, an executive function task that has previously been shown to be performed better by bilingual than monolingual 8-year-olds ( Bialystok 2010 ). There were no differences between children in the two kindergarten programs, but all these children found the task to be difficult. Because of the small sample size, the results need to be considered more suggestive than definitive, but they point to the possibility that even limited exposure to bilingual education improves children’s executive function.

Another small-scale study conducted with a population of middle-class children from kindergarten through second grade produced somewhat different results. Kaushanskaya, Gross, and Buac (2014) examined the effects of classroom bilingualism on executive functioning as measured by task shifting as well as measures of verbal memory and word learning. For task switching, they used the Dimensional Change Card Sorting Task ( Frye, Zelazo, and Palfai 1995 ), a task previously found to be performed better by bilingual than monolingual preschool children ( Bialystok 1999 ). There were no performance differences between children in the two programs on the executive function shifting task, but the task was arguably too easy for the children since it is typically used with younger children, or on a test of verbal short-term memory. However, tests of verbal working memory and word learning were performed better by the children in the bilingual education program.

In these three examples, children who were assigned to groups either because of ethnicity ( Mezzacappa 2004 ) or education program ( Esposito and Baker-Ward 2013 ; Kaushanskaya, Gross, and Buac 2014 ) were compared to controls for their performance on executive function tasks. A different approach is to use exposure to bilingual education as a scaled variable to determine if it is associated with executive function performance and thereby avoid between-groups comparisons. Two studies by Bialystok and Barac (2012) investigated the relation between the amount of time young children had spent in an immersion program and performance on executive function tasks. Children from monolingual English-speaking homes who were attending schools in which instruction was either in Hebrew (Study 1) or French (Study 2) were administered executive function and metalinguistic tasks. The tasks were different in both studies, but the results were the same: performance on the metalinguistic task was related to children’s verbal ability and intelligence but performance on the executive function task was related to the length of time children had spent in the bilingual program and their degree of bilingualism. Similar results were reported in two studies by Nicolay and Poncelet (2013 , 2015 ) showing better performance on executive function tasks for children in French immersion programs. In these studies, children were followed longitudinally, ruling out initial differences in ability. Thus, the results show that children’s level of executive function performance is related to their degree of bilingualism and experience with bilingual education.

Is bilingual education for everyone?

There have always been questions about whether bilingual education programs were appropriate for all children or whether they were an exclusive option best suited for high-achieving students with strong family support (see review and discussion in Cummins and Swain 1986 ). Equally, some have argued that bilingualism itself is difficult and should be reserved as a ‘privilege’ for children who face no additional burdens from linguistic or other cognitive challenges, a position strongly disputed by Kohnert (2007) . Unsurprisingly, the answer is not simple, but the evidence that exists supports Kohnert’s view that bilingualism adds no further cost to children’s achievement regardless of their initial levels of language and cognitive ability.

Consider first the role of intelligence, a variable on which all children differ. In one of the first studies on this issue, Genesee (1976) examined the role of IQ as measured by a standardized test on the development of French second-language abilities for children who were learning French either through immersion or foreign language instruction in school. The main result was that IQ was related to reading ability and language use for all children, but there was no association between IQ and overall communication ability; children at all levels of intelligence communicated with similar effectiveness. Importantly, there were no interactions with the type of program in which children were learning French: low IQ children in the immersion and foreign language program performed similarly to each other on all language and cognitive measures, in both cases performing more poorly than children with higher IQ scores in both programs. Thus, there was no evidence of any negative effect of participation in an immersion program for children whose measured intelligence was below average.

More serious than low IQ, however, is the possible role that a learning disability, such as specific language impairment (SLI), might play in children’s response to bilingual education. The limited evidence for this question is similar to that found for IQ, namely, that the deficit associated with SLI is not further exacerbated by bilingual education and has the additional consequence of imparting at least some measure of proficiency in another language. Few studies have investigated this question in the context of bilingual education, perhaps because children with language impairment are widely discouraged from attending bilingual education programs, but an early study by Bruck (1982) assessed language and cognitive outcomes for children in kindergarten and first grade in French immersion programs, some of whom had been diagnosed with language impairment. These were Anglophone children being educated through French, and linguistic measures for both French and English were included. The crucial comparison was the progress found for language-impaired children in the French immersion program and similar children in a mainstream English instruction program. There were no significant differences between these groups. Even though these children struggled, they did not struggle more than they would if they were in the bilingual program. This issue of selecting the appropriate comparison is central to the debate. Trites (1978) , for example, argued against placing children with learning disabilities in French immersion programs, but his comparison was based on children without learning disabilities in those programs rather than children with learning disabilities in monolingual English programs.

Aside from the role of bilingual education in children’s language development, it is difficult to compare skills in the two languages for children with SLI because the areas of linguistic difficulty associated with this disorder vary across languages ( Kohnert, Windsor, and Ebert 2009 ). With this caveat in mind, a few studies have examined the effect of SLI on language development for children who grow up bilingually. Korkman et al. (2012) compared monolingual Swedish speakers and Swedish-Finnish bilingual children who were 5–7 years old on a range of language assessments in Swedish. About half of the children in each language group were typically developing and half had been diagnosed with SLI. As expected, children with SLI performed more poorly than typically developing children on these linguistic measures, an outcome required by definition, but there was no added burden from bilingualism and no interaction of bilingualism and language impairment. Bilingual children also obtained lower scores on some vocabulary measures, but this occurred equally for bilingual children in the typically developing and SLI groups and is consistent with large-scale studies comparing the vocabulary of monolingual and bilingual children ( Bialystok et al. 2010 ).

Paradis et al. (2003) took a different approach to investigating syntactic proficiency in children with SLI. Rather than comparing children with SLI to typically developing children, they compared three groups of 7-year-old children, all of whom had been diagnosed with SLI: monolingual English speakers, monolingual French speakers, and English-French bilinguals. The sample was small and consisted of only 8 bilingual children, 21 English monolingual children, and 10 French monolingual children, so data were analyzed with non-parametric tests and results must be interpreted cautiously. The results showed no significant differences between the three groups of children in their mastery of morphosyntax; in other words, no additional delay to language acquisition could be attributed to bilingualism for children with SLI.

The most salient risk factor generally considered in this literature is not individual differences in children’s ability to become bilingual but rather low SES, a situation that applies to many bilingual Hispanic children in the US. Although it was discussed above in the context of testing outcomes of bilingual education, the issue is sufficiently important to warrant further consideration.

The main concern for Hispanic children from Spanish-speaking homes in the US is whether they will acquire adequate levels of English language proficiency and literacy to function in school and beyond. Although there is some controversy over this question, the majority of studies have shown improved outcomes with bilingual education ( Genesee and Lindholm-Leary 2012 ). This conclusion is supported by two major reviews and meta-analyses conducted first by Willig (1985) and then by Rolstad, Mahoney, and Glass (2005) for papers published after the Willig review. In a later review and meta-analysis, Francis, Lesaux, and August (2006) came to a broader and more emphatic conclusion: ‘there is no indication that bilingual instruction impedes academic achievement in either the native language or English, whether for language-minority students, students receiving heritage language instruction, or those enrolled in French immersion programs’ (397). The most persuasive evidence on this point comes from the large-scale longitudinal study and review conducted by Collier and Thomas (2004) that included every variety of bilingual education; the authors decide unequivocally for the superiority of bilingual education in developing the skills and knowledge of Hispanic and other at-risk children.

Contrary to this conclusion, Rossell and Baker (1996) argued that the effectiveness of bilingual education is inconclusive. As stated earlier, Rossell and Baker defined bilingual education narrowly and considered only programs that provided instruction through the first language for limited EP children, in other words, Spanish-speaking children in the US (although curiously they included some studies of Canadian French immersion in their analyses). However, this is only one of the many incarnations of bilingual education so while an evaluation of its effectiveness is important, that evaluation does not necessarily generalize to the broader concept, a point that Rossell and Baker acknowledge. Their review began with a list of 300 studies and then excluded 228 of them for a variety of methodological reasons, so the final sample of 72 studies that entered the meta-analysis may not be representative of this literature. However, Greene (1997) conducted a follow-up study from the same database using different inclusion criteria and reported that a meta-analysis found positive outcomes for bilingual education. The decision about inclusion or exclusion of specific studies is obviously crucial to the outcome; Rossell and Baker acknowledge that Willig’s (1985) positive conclusion can be traced to her choices on this important decision. However, it is impossible to adjudicate between these two conclusions regarding whether bilingual education is the most effective way to promote English language skills in limited English proficiency children ( Willig 1985 ) or not ( Rossell and Baker 1996 ) because the conclusions were based on different evidence. Yet, whether or not there are advantages, the evidence is clear that there is no cost to the development of English language skills in bilingual programs. What is completely uncontroversial is that bilingual education additionally maintains and develops Spanish skills in these children, an outcome that Rossell and Baker note but dismiss as irrelevant.

A different way of considering the impact of bilingual education on school outcomes for low SES Hispanic children in the US is to use data on the reclassification of children from ELL to EP, a decision made on the basis of English language and literacy test scores. In that sense, reclassification is an indication that adequate levels of English proficiency have been achieved. Lindholm-Leary and Block (2010) note that the probability of these children being designated as EP after 10 years of essentially mainstream English classrooms is only 40%, so the standard is low. However, Umansky and Reardon (2014) compared this reclassification rate for Hispanic students enrolled in either bilingual or English-only classrooms and found that these rates were lower in elementary school for children in bilingual programs than in English classrooms, but that the pattern reversed by the end of high school at which time children in bilingual programs had an overall higher rate of reclassification and better academic outcomes. As with some of the studies based on test scores, English proficiency takes several years to develop, but according to the reclassification data, it developed sooner in the bilingual programs.

In a review of studies that have examined the effect of various risk factors on children’s response to bilingual education, Genesee and Fortune (2014) found no case in which the bilingual education program contributed to lower academic outcomes for these children than for similar children in monolingual programs. Children with language disability, for example, will always find language tasks to be difficult; the important outcome of this research is that they do not find such tasks to be any more difficult in two languages than they are in one.

Evaluation of bilingual education for young children

In most evaluation research for educational programs, the conclusion tends to converge on a binary answer in which the program is considered to be either effective or not, or more or less effective than a control or alternative program. Given the complexity of bilingual education, such binary conclusions are inadequate. One reason is that independently of the quality of the program, bilingual education to some extent will almost inevitably help children to become bilingual or maintain bilingualism, an outcome that in itself is valuable but rarely considered in strict program evaluations. Some research has shown that even at early stages of bilingual education the cognitive advantages of bilingualism can be detected. Therefore, beyond the possible cognitive benefits of bilingualism described above are the intangible benefits of bilingual education such as potential to connect to extended family, increased opportunity for employment in a global economy, facilitation of travel and broadening of social spheres, and enrichment from widened horizons from language, arts, and culture. When successful, bilingual education offers a unique opportunity to impart the resources to sustain a valuable lifestyle asset. As one example, recent research has shown that lifelong bilingualism contributes to cognitive reserve and delays the onset of symptoms of dementia (reviews in Bak and Alladi 2014 ; Bialystok et al. 2016 ).

These consequences of bilingualism, however, should not bias the interpretation of the evidence regarding the educational efficacy of bilingual education. To undertake that assessment, it is necessary to return to the distinction between bilingual education and the education of bilingual children. The first is a general question about the feasibility of educating children through a language in which they may not be fully proficient; the second is a specific question about the appropriateness of this option for children whose circumstances and abilities may mitigate those educational outcomes.

Both questions can be considered in terms of two factors that permeate many of these studies: the type of outcome measured and the demographic profile of the children in the program. Regarding the first, the main distinction is whether the studies assessed language proficiency or some other cognitive or academic outcome. Most studies included an evaluation of language proficiency in the majority language (English for Hispanic children in the US, French immersion children in Canada, community language for indigenous language programs in the US and elsewhere) and some included assessments of proficiency in the minority language, which is often the language of instruction (e.g. Spanish in the US, French in Canada, Maori in New Zealand). Fewer studies examined assessments of other educational outcomes, such as mathematics, subject curricula, cognitive ability, retention rates, attitudes, or enrollment in higher education. The second factor is whether the children assessed in these studies were at risk of academic failure for any number of reasons, such as low SES, poor language proficiency, or individual difficulty from learning, language, or social challenges. This combination of factors creates four categories for which there are three possible outcomes: (a) no measurable difference between bilingual and standard programs, (b) some advantage for participation in a bilingual program, or (c) hardship for students in bilingual programs that leads to poorer outcomes than would be obtained in traditional programs. If we consider that all bilingual programs additionally support some degree of bilingualism, then the only negative outcome would be (c).

Regarding language assessments, most studies show that proficiency in the majority language is comparable for children in bilingual and mainstream classes, providing that an appropriate comparison group is used and sufficient time is allowed. Children in Canadian French immersion programs develop English language skills that are at least comparable to those of other middle-class children in English programs (and sometimes higher but there may be other factors involved because of the selectivity of French immersion, see Hutchins 2015 ), and Hispanic children in US bilingual education programs eventually develop English language skills that are comparable to those of similar Hispanic children in English programs, although it takes several years to reach that level. Proficiency in the minority language is inevitably lower than is found for a native speaker of those languages, even when it is the language of instruction, but is invariably higher than levels obtained by children in English programs who have had little exposure to that language. For language proficiency, therefore, there is no evidence of a cost to the development of either language, although it may take several years to establish desired levels.

For other subject material, outcomes depend in part on the language of testing. As Macnamara (1967) showed long ago, the extent to which a weak language is used to conduct achievement tests can make the test equally a test of language proficiency, impeding children’s demonstration of proficiency in the tested content. In many cases, studies that assess academic achievement provide inadequate information about the potential involvement of language proficiency so the test results are sometimes indeterminate. At the same time, Mondt and colleagues (2011) demonstrated that simply by teaching a subject through a particular language makes proficiency in that subject more fluent when tested in the language of schooling. Thus, there are reciprocal relationships between academic achievement and the language of school instruction, and these relationships are flexible.

The second factor is the characteristics of the children themselves. Children entering school with any learning or language disability or social disadvantage will struggle to succeed, so an evaluation of bilingual education needs to hold constant these abilities and select the appropriate comparison group. Thus, the relevant question is whether children struggle disproportionately more if they are in a bilingual education program. Here, too, the evidence seems clear: there is no additional burden for children with specific challenges in bilingual programs than in single language programs if the appropriate comparison is made. But even if there were additional effort required by bilingual education, it needs to be evaluated in terms of the potential benefits for that child – the possibility of acquiring a heritage language, the opportunity to develop at least some proficiency in another language, and the potential for attaining the cognitive benefits of bilingualism.

Bilingual education is not perfect and it is not one thing. At the same time, the quality of the research is uneven and it is difficult to determine how much weight should be assigned to contradictory outcomes. The research generally pays inadequate attention to the social context in which these complex processes play out, such as home literacy, parental education, children’s levels of language proficiency, ability of parents to support children’s education in that language, and numerous other factors. Rossell and Baker (1996) claim that the research is inconclusive, and although there is still much to be learned, the weight of evidence is firmly on the side of bilingual education. In this brief review of a small portion of bilingual education programs in different countries and aimed at educating different kinds of children, there is no evidence that it creates measurable obstacles to children’s school achievement. Some studies show no advantage of bilingual education over other programs, but those need to be interpreted in terms of the benefits of learning another language and gaining access to the cognitive advantages of bilingualism. Ultimately, a proper evaluation of bilingual education requires detailed description of the structure of the program, the quality of the teaching, and the match between children’s needs and abilities and the specific educational program being offered.

There is no single factor that can override the deep complexity of children’s development and prescribe a solution for an individual child, let alone a solution for all children. For both gifted children who are certain to excel and children who face challenges, the education program they follow, including participation in a bilingual program, may not fundamentally change their school experience. There is no credible evidence that bilingual education adds or creates burden for children, yet it is incontrovertible that it provides the advantage of learning another language and possibly the cognitive benefits of bilingualism. The over-riding conclusion from the available evidence is that bilingual education is a net benefit for all children in the early school years.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the US National Institutes of Health [grant number R01HD052523].

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

• Adesope OO, Lavin T, Thompson T, Ungerleider C. A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Cognitive Correlates of Bilingualism. Review of Educational Research. 2010; 80 :207–245. [ Google Scholar ]
• August D, Shanahan T. Developing Literacy in Second-language Learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates; 2006. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bak TH, Alladi S. Can Being Bilingual Affect the Onset of Dementia? Future Neurology. 2014; 9 :101–103. [ Google Scholar ]
• Baker C. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Stroud: Multilingual Matters; 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
• Barac R, Bialystok E, Castro DC, Sanchez M. The Cognitive Development of Young Dual Language Learners: A Critical Review. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. 2014; 29 :699–714. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Barnett WS, Yarosz DJ, Thomas J, Jung K, Blanco D. Two-way and Monolingual English Immersion in Preschool Education: An Experimental Comparison. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. 2007; 22 :277–293. [ Google Scholar ]
• Best JR, Miller PH, Naglieri JA. Relations Between Executive Function and Academic Achievement from Ages 5 to 17 in a Large, Representative National Sample. Learning and Individual Differences. 2011; 21 :327–336. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bialystok E. Cognitive Complexity and Attentional Control in the Bilingual Mind. Child Development. 1999; 70 :636–644. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bialystok E. Global-local and Trail-making Tasks by Monolingual and Bilingual Children: Beyond Inhibition. Developmental Psychology. 2010; 46 :93–105. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bialystok E, Abutalebi J, Bak TH, Burke DM, Kroll JF. Aging in Two Languages: Implications for Public Health. Ageing Research Reviews. 2016; 27 :56–60. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bialystok E, Barac R. Emerging Bilingualism: Dissociating Advantages for Metalinguistic Awareness and Executive Control. Cognition. 2012; 122 :67–73. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bialystok E, Luk G, Peets KF, Yang S. Receptive Vocabulary Differences in Monolingual and Bilingual Children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 2010; 13 :525–531. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Blair C, Razza RP. Relating Effortful Control, Executive Function, and False Belief Understanding to Emerging Math and Literacy Ability in Kindergarten. Child Development. 2007; 78 :647–663. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bruck M. Language Impaired Children’s Performance in an Additive Bilingual Education Program. Applied Psycholinguistics. 1982; 3 :45–60. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bull R, Espy KA, Wiebe SA. Short-term Memory, Working Memory, and Executive Functioning in Preschoolers: Longitudinal Predictors of Mathematical Achievement at age 7 Years. Developmental Neuropsychology. 2008; 33 :205–228. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Collier VP, Thomas WP. The Astounding Effectiveness of Dual Language Education for All. NABE Journal of Research and Practice. 2004; 2 :1–20. [ Google Scholar ]
• Cummins James, John Macnamara. Working Papers on Bilingualism, No. 13. Washington, DC: Distributed by ERIC Clearinghouse; 1977. Immersion Education in Ireland: A Critical Review of Macnamara’s Findings. Reply to Dr. Cummins. Reply to the Reply. http://www.eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED140666 . [ Google Scholar ]
• Cummins J, Swain M. Bilingualism in Education: Aspects of Theory, Research, and Practice. Abingdon: Routledge; 1986. [ Google Scholar ]
• Duncan GJ, Ziol-Guest KM, Kalil A. Early-childhood Poverty and Adult Attainment, Behavior, and Health. Child Development. 2010; 81 :306–325. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Durie A. Emancipatory Maori Education: Speaking from the Heart. Language, Culture and Curriculum. 1998; 11 :297–308. [ Google Scholar ]
• Esposito AG, Baker-Ward L. Dual-language Education for Low-income Children: Preliminary Evidence of Benefits for Executive Function. Bilingual Research Journal. 2013; 36 :295–310. [ Google Scholar ]
• Fan J, McCandliss BD, Sommer T, Raz A, Posner MI. Testing the Efficiency and Independence of Attentional Networks. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience. 2002; 14 :340–347. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Fishman J. Bilingual Education: An International Sociological Perspective. Rowley, MA: Newbury House; 1976. [ Google Scholar ]
• Forum for Education and Democracy. Democracy at Risk: The Need for a New Federal Policy in Education. Washington, DC: The Forum for Education and Democracy; 2008. [ Google Scholar ]
• Francis DJ, Lesaux N, August D. Language of Instruction. In: August D, Shanahan L, editors. Developing Literacy in Second-language Learners. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum; 2006. pp. 365–413. [ Google Scholar ]
• Frye D, Zelazo PD, Palfai T. Theory of Mind and Rule-based Reasoning. Cognitive Development. 1995; 10 :483–527. [ Google Scholar ]
• Garcia O. Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. New York: Wiley-Blackwell; 2011. [ Google Scholar ]
• Genesee F. The Role of Intelligence in Second Language Learning. Language Learning. 1976; 26 :267–280. [ Google Scholar ]
• Genesee F. Bilingual Education of Majority-language Children: The Immersion Experiments in Review. Applied Psycholinguistics. 1983; 4 :1–46. [ Google Scholar ]
• Genesee F. What Do We Know About Bilingual Education for Majority Language Students. In: Bhatia TK, Ritchie W, editors. Handbook of Bilingualism and Multiculturalism. Malden, MA: Blackwell; 2004. pp. 547–576. [ Google Scholar ]
• Genesee F, Fortune T. Bilingual Education and at-risk Students. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education. 2014; 2 :165–180. [ Google Scholar ]
• Genesee F, Lindholm-Leary K. The Education of English Language Learners. In: Harris K, Graham S, Urdan T, editors. APA Handbook of Educational Psychology. Washington, DC: APA Books; 2012. pp. 499–526. [ Google Scholar ]
• Greene JP. A Meta-analysis of the Rossell and Baker Review of Bilingual Education Research. Bilingual Research Journal. 1997; 21 :103–122. [ Google Scholar ]
• Han WJ. Bilingualism and Academic Achievement. Child Development. 2012; 83 :300–321. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hermanto N, Moreno S, Bialystok E. Linguistic and Metalinguistic Outcomes of Intense Immersion Education: How Bilingual? International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 2012; 15 :131–145. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hutchins A. Just Say ‘Non’: The Problem with French Immersion. Macleans Magazine. 2015 http://www.macleans.ca/education/just-say-non-the-problem-with-french-immersion/ [ Google Scholar ]
• Kaushanskaya M, Gross M, Buac M. Effects of Classroom Bilingualism on Task-shifting, Verbal Memory, and Word Learning in Children. Developmental Science. 2014; 17 :564–583. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kohnert K. Language Disorders in Bilingual Children and Adults. San Diego, CA: Plural Publishing; 2007. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kohnert K, Windsor J, Ebert KD. Primary or ‘Specific’ Language Impairment and Children Learning a Second Language. Brain and Language. 2009; 109 :101–111. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Korkman M, Stenroos M, Mickos A, Westman M, Ekholm P, Byring R. Does Simultaneous Bilingualism Aggravate Children’s Specific Language Problems? Acta Paediatrica. 2012; 101 :946–952. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563. 1974 [ Google Scholar ]
• Lepage JF, Corbeil JP. The Evolution of English–French Bilingualism in Canada from 1961 to 2011. Statistics Canada; 2013. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lindholm-Leary K. Bilingual and Biliteracy Skills in Young Spanish-speaking Low-SES Children: Impact of Instructional Language and Primary Language Proficiency. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 2014; 17 :144–159. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lindholm-Leary K, Block N. Achievement in Predominantly Low SES/Hispanic Dual Language Schools. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 2010; 13 :43–60. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lopez MG, Tashakkori A. Narrowing the Gap: Effects of a Two-way Bilingual Education Program on the Literacy Development of at-risk Primary Students. Journal of Education For Students Placed At Risk. 2004; 9 :325–336. [ Google Scholar ]
• Macnamara J. The Effects of Instruction in a Weaker Language. Journal of Social Issues. 1967; 23 :121–135. [ Google Scholar ]
• Marian V, Shook A, Schroeder SR. Bilingual Two-way Immersion Programs Benefit Academic Achievement. Bilingual Research Journal. 2013; 36 :167–186. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• May S, Hill R. Maori-medium Education: Current Issues and Challenges. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 2005; 8 :377–403. [ Google Scholar ]
• McCarty TL, Watahomigie LJ. Indigenous Community-based Language Education in the USA. Language, Culture and Curriculum. 1998; 11 :309–324. [ Google Scholar ]
• McClelland MM, Morrison FJ, Holmes DL. Children at Risk for Early Academic Problems: The Role of Learning-related Social Skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly. 2000; 15 :307–329. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mehisto P, Genesee F, editors. Building Bilingual Education Systems: Forces, Mechanisms and Counterweights. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2015. [ Google Scholar ]
• Mezzacappa E. Alerting, Orienting, and Executive Attention: Developmental Properties and Sociodemographic Correlates in an Epidemiological Sample of Young, Urban Children. Child Development. 2004; 75 :1373–1386. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mondt K, Struys E, Van den Noort M, Baleriaux D, Metens T, Paquier P, Van de Craen P, Bosch P, Denolin V. Neural Differences in Bilingual Children’s Arithmetic Processing Depending on Language of Instruction. Mind, Brain, and Education. 2011; 5 :79–88. [ Google Scholar ]
• Montanari S. A Case Study of Bi-literacy Development among Children Enrolled in an Italian–English Dual Language Program in Southern California. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. 2013; 17 :509–525. [ Google Scholar ]
• Nicolay A-C, Poncelet M. Cognitive Advantage in Children Enrolled in a Second-language Immersion Elementary School Program for Three Years. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 2013; 16 :597–607. [ Google Scholar ]
• Nicolay A-C, Poncelet M. Cognitive Benefits in Children Enrolled in an Early Bilingual Immersion School: A Follow Up Study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition. 2015; 18 :789–795. [ Google Scholar ]
• Nieto D. A Brief History of Bilingual Education in the United States. Perspectives on Urban Education. 2009; 6 :61–72. [ Google Scholar ]
• Ovando CJ. Bilingual Education in the United States: Historical Development and Current Issues. Bilingual Education in the United States. 2003; 27 :1–24. [ Google Scholar ]
• Padilla AM, Fan L, Xu X, Silva D. A Mandarin/English Two-way Immersion Program: Language Proficiency and Academic Achievement. Foreign Language Annals. 2013; 46 :661–679. [ Google Scholar ]
• Paradis J, Crago M, Genesee F, Rice M. French-English Bilinguals with SLI: How Do They Compare with Their Monolingual Peers? Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research. 2003; 46 :113–127. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Rolstad K, Mahoney K, Glass GV. The Big Picture: A Meta-analysis of Program Effectiveness Research on English Language Learners. Educational Policy. 2005; 19 :572–594. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rosier P, Holm W. The Rock Point Experience: A Longitudinal Study of a Navajo School Program. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics; 1980. [ Google Scholar ]
• Rossell CH, Baker K. The Educational Effectiveness of Bilingual Education. Research in the Teaching of English. 1996; 30 :7–74. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schwartz M. The Impact of the First Language First Model on Vocabulary Development among Preschool Bilingual Children. Reading and Writing. 2013; 27 :709–732. [ Google Scholar ]
• Schwartz M, Shaul Y. Narrative Development among Language-minority Children: The Role of Bilingual Versus Monolingual Preschool Education. Language, Culture and Curriculum. 2013; 26 :36–51. [ Google Scholar ]
• Spelke ES, Tsivkin S. Language and Number: A Bilingual Training Study. Cognition. 2001; 78 :45–88. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Swain M, Lapkin S. Evaluating Bilingual Education: A Canadian Case Study. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters; 1982. [ Google Scholar ]
• Trites R. Learning Disabilities in Immersion. Canadian Modern Language Review. 1978; 5 :888–889. [ Google Scholar ]
• Troike RC. Research Evidence for the Effectiveness of Bilingual Education. NABE Journal. 1978; 3 :13–24. [ Google Scholar ]
• Umansky IM, Reardon SF. Reclassification Patterns among Latino English Learner Students in Bilingual, Dual Immersion, and English Immersion Classrooms. American Educational Research Journal. 2014; 51 :879–912. [ Google Scholar ]
• Willig A. A Meta-analysis of Selected Studies on the Effectiveness of Bilingual Education. Review of Educational Research. 1985; 55 :269–317. [ Google Scholar ]

How edtech is transforming bilingual education in the U.S.

Bilingual education will only continue to grow, but we must view it as a strength to support and develop.

Key points:

• Smart policy decisions are needed to support bilingual education
• 5 practical ways to support English learners in the classroom
• 3 things to consider when designing digital learning experiences
• For more news on learning with edtech, visit eSN’s Digital Learning hub

Millions of students within the United States public school system are non-native English speakers. As this figure continues to grow year over year, true bilingual education is becoming more vital to equitably support student success.

How do we ensure students achieve proficiency with the English language while receiving a rich and comprehensive education? One that affirms and celebrates their identities and helps them learn about and understand others?

Today’s technology presents us with answers. Thanks to computer-driven translation, AI, and advanced classroom tools, we stand to put every student on a path to success with the English language and beyond.

The numbers behind bilingual education

Within three decades, the number of households speaking a language other than English has nearly tripled from 23 million to 68 million . In states like California, Texas, New Mexico, and Nevada, these numbers are even more drastic, with 44 percent, 36 percent, 33 percent, and 31 percent of their populations speaking a different language at home.

As expected, this is reflected in the United States’ student population, which also grew in non-native English learners over the last 10 years. In 2020, one survey found that approximately 5 million public school students were English learners–that’s over 10 percent of students. Again, Texas has about 20 percent of those students, California has 17 percent, 16 percent are in New Mexico and 13 percent are in Nevada.

Bilingual education’s impact

With 1 in every 10 students experiencing a lack of English proficiency, millions are at risk for struggles with reading and writing comprehension, reduced academic achievement, and less rigorous tracks of study, which lead to increased dropout rates, and lowered educational attainment and human capital.

Bilingual education has been shown to not only increase native language proficiency but English proficiency as well, as the ultimate goal should be to build mastery in both languages. If a large contingent of the United States population were to not have English proficiency, they would suffer. Some studies have suggested that non-native language speakers struggle to access effective healthcare, while others have found increases in negative interactions.

It should be recognized that bilingual education lifts all boats. In a world that is now so connected, those who speak multiple languages have much to gain. These speakers are more competitive in the workplace, see more job opportunities, and even are found to have better brain health.

Further and especially in these new days of AI, human-to-human connection, communication, and collaboration have and will only become more paramount.

Where edtech steps in

While the student population speaking languages other than English within the U.S. has rapidly grown over the last three decades, technology has advanced even faster. Now, edtech can support bilingual education in a way impossible before.

Smart investments in technology not only improve education for bilingual and non-native English speakers but also help make educators themselves more efficient and impactful, effectively preparing all students for the future.

Building bilingual materials

It’s uncommon for educational materials to be authored for non-English speakers in the native language of the user. It comes down to a simple return on investment calculation, as the number of users is too low compared with the larger market for a publisher to produce these materials in a cost-effective manner.

Educational content within the U.S. is typically written in English, and then translated into other languages as needed. Largely human-driven, this process is error-prone,  resource-heavy, slow, and costly. Since this process is so intensive, curricula available in languages other than English were typically limited to the most common, specifically Spanish, even though there are far more others that need to be served.

Today’s computer-driven translation and AI translation can translate a text with incredible accuracy in a matter of minutes. Then, human translators can check for accuracy, add relevant context, and run quality control, significantly reducing production costs and increasing the effectiveness of the text.

With cost and resource savings, more time can be dedicated to improving the quality of these texts, ultimately improving how the curriculum in languages other than English flows into and improves English learning, to create truly bilingual students.

Technology can also assist in solving the issue of the limited number of languages available. There are over 350 languages used within the United States , according to the U.S. Census Bureau, making it one of the most language-diverse countries in the world. In fact, 21.6 percent of the population reports speaking a language other than English at home . Outside of English and Spanish, Chinese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, and Arabic are the most common. There are also Native North American dialects like Navajo, Yupik, Dakota, Apache, Keres, and Cherokee.

Because AI and machine learning can translate far more quickly, it is significantly less costly to create content in any given language, adding to the number of curricula offered in languages other than English.

Many make the mistake of believing that bilingual education means that you are separately teaching students in different languages forever. This is not true. Real bilingual education is developing a path that gently brings learners who speak languages other than English down the path to full English instruction, developing proficiency in both languages as their education progresses.

With this in mind, producers of high-quality core curricula are already offering a comprehensive set of resources and strategies to support bilingual education. Both EL Education and Illustrative Mathematics , national nonprofit publishers of K-12 curriculum, include the development of English language proficiency within their curricula.

The benefits of rapid translation go beyond the walls of the classroom as well. Parents and/or guardians, of course, want to be updated on the progress of their children and what they are learning. In the past, limited-English or non-English households may have struggled with understanding assignments, feedback, or grading. Now, not only is the curriculum more accessible, but translation and chat capabilities power direct parent-to-teacher communication in any given language.

Better assessments and educational outcomes

We can lean on technology to do more than recreate texts. Through the use of AI and large language models, it is possible to efficiently generate standards-aligned assessments in foreign languages as well.

As with content, most assessments and standardized tests are simply translated directly from English into another language. Imagine how difficult it would be to try and learn something that wasn’t translated perfectly to your native language, and then try to take a test that wasn’t translated well either.

Again, technology can drive English language translations, leaving the final quality assurance and relevancy check to instructional experts. When both the learning and testing materials are correctly reflected in the right language, with the right cultural context, and delivered in a relevant way, testing becomes far more reliable.

Take today’s state standardized tests as an example. What we’ve learned is that most are not actually testing for a skillset, but really just test how prepared you are for a standardized test. These test procedural fluency and general background knowledge more than skill and ability.

A study found that on average, English-learning students score approximately 46 percent lower on high school reading tests and 31% below on high school mathematics tests . But this is not because of lack of skill; it’s for a lack of proficiency in standardized testing.

Students with experience in standardized testing and general background knowledge typically perform the best, whereas those with a lack of context underperform. True bilingual education equips non-native English speakers with the tools they need to perform on standardized testing. On a macro level, this provides more accurate insights into state, district, and school performance.

More support for educators

Perhaps one of the most important ways technology can benefit bilingual education is by supporting teachers. Educators are burdened enough, and while 62 percent of U.S. schools have at least some English-learning students , not all teachers are properly equipped to provide equitable education.

Thankfully, we are at a place where edtech can significantly reduce the cognitive load placed on teachers. Tools like digital assessments and grade books can automatically grade assignments and assessments, including those in other languages, alleviating the stress of grading across dialects.

Classroom technology provides easier access to curriculum in multiple languages, making it easier to navigate, utilize, and distribute. These technologies can give teachers their time back, reducing their burden and allowing them to spend more time with students.

Digital tools such as digital assessments, grade books, and learning management systems enable teachers to efficiently manage classroom activities and personalize instruction for diverse learners . Moreover, technology-integrated professional development programs empower educators to enhance their pedagogical practices and effectively implement bilingual curriculum frameworks.

But educators still require support, and with savings in materials and time, school leaders need to make an investment in teacher training. The bilingual population will only continue to grow, so the right investments need to be made to support teachers in their roles.

Technology can support here too–with tools that integrate professional learning and curriculum together, educators can become more proficient at teaching the bilingual curriculum, leading to more successful students.

Policy is a key player

Bilingual education will only continue to grow, but we need to look at it as a strength to support and develop. One of the great things about the United States of America is its cultural mix, diversity, and willingness to open its doors to others.

Another great aspect of the U.S. is the partnerships between the public and private sectors. In the case of bilingual education, the private sector has responded. Technology companies have, and will continue to, build products to support classrooms, but ultimately there is a policy call that must be made on the public end.

Effective bilingual education requires a comprehensive policy framework that supports the needs of diverse learners and promotes equity in education. Edtech plays a pivotal role in informing policy decisions by providing policymakers with data-driven insights into the efficacy of bilingual education initiatives.

By leveraging technology-enabled assessment data and analytics, policymakers can identify areas of improvement, allocate resources effectively, and develop evidence-based policies that promote educational equity and excellence. Moreover, partnerships between the public and private sectors enable the co-creation of innovative solutions that address the evolving needs of bilingual learners and educators.

While edtech is currently transforming the landscape of bilingual education, we won’t reach an optimal level of benefit until smart policy decisions are made in the name of bilingual education. Those in decision-making capacities at every level must recognize this as a high need and know that the problem cannot solve itself. Policymakers need to open the door to allow edtech providers to make an impact.

The time is now to make smart investments into the right curricula and tools to support educators and students. Educators need to be unburdened, and students need to be put on a path to success.

Sign up for our K-12 newsletter

• Recent Posts

Abbas Manjee is the Chief Academic Officer at Kiddom .

• The importance of the ITS and Facilities relationship - March 22, 2024
• How edtech is transforming bilingual education in the U.S. - March 21, 2024
• 5 ways to keep schools safer with innovative visitor management - March 21, 2024

Want to share a great resource? Let us know at [email protected] .

Username or Email Address

Remember Me

" * " indicates required fields

eSchool News uses cookies to improve your experience. Visit our Privacy Policy  for more information.

• Daily Crossword
• Word Puzzle
• Word Finder
• Word of the Day
• Synonym of the Day
• Word of the Year
• Language stories
• All featured
• Gender and sexuality
• All pop culture
• Grammar Coach ™
• Writing hub
• Grammar essentials
• Commonly confused
• All writing tips
• Pop culture
• Writing tips
• bilingual education

schooling in which those not fluent in the standard or national language are taught in their own language.

Origin of bilingual education

Words nearby bilingual education.

• bilinear form
• bilinear transformation
• bilingualism

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use bilingual education in a sentence

Slav students counter-rioted when Albanians demanded bilingual education .

What is Bilingual Education? & Its Benefits

Bilingual Education

Bilingual Education is an educational approach that aims to provide instruction in two languages, typically the native language of the students and another language, such as English, in order to help students become proficient in both languages. This approach is used in various educational settings around the world and is designed to benefit students who come from linguistically diverse backgrounds.

There are several different models of bilingual education, including:

• Transitional Bilingual Education: In this model, students are initially taught in their native language while gradually transitioning to instruction in the second language (e.g., English). The goal is for students to become proficient in both languages over time.
• Dual Language or Two-Way Immersion Programs: These programs typically involve a mix of students from different language backgrounds. Instruction is provided in both languages, and the goal is for all students to become bilingual and bi-literate. This approach promotes cross-cultural understanding and language proficiency in both languages.
• Maintenance of Bilingual Education: This model is often used in communities where there is a significant population of students who speak a particular language as their first language. The goal is to maintain and strengthen the students’ proficiency in their native language while also teaching them a second language.
• Content-Based Bilingual Education: In this approach, students are taught academic content in both languages. For example, mathematics may be taught in one language, while science is taught in the other. This approach is designed to help students develop proficiency in both languages while also learning subject matter content.

Benefits of Bilingual Education

Bilingual education offers a range of benefits to students and society as a whole. Here are some of the key advantages:

Bilingual Proficiency: The most obvious benefit is that students who receive bilingual education become proficient in two languages. This opens up a wider range of communication and employment opportunities, as they can interact with and understand people from different linguistic backgrounds.

Cognitive Benefits: Bilingual education has been associated with cognitive advantages, including improved problem-solving skills, greater mental flexibility, and enhanced creativity. Learning and switching between two languages can exercise and strengthen the brain.

Academic Achievement: Research has shown that students in bilingual programs often perform as well as or even better than their monolingual peers on standardized tests. They may also excel in specific subjects due to their language proficiency.

Cultural Awareness and Sensitivity: Bilingual education can foster cultural awareness and sensitivity. When students learn a second language, they also gain insight into the culture and traditions associated with that language. This can lead to a more open-minded and globally aware society.

Career Opportunities: In an increasingly globalized world, bilingualism is a valuable skill in the job market. Many employers seek bilingual or multilingual candidates because they can communicate with a broader range of customers, clients, and colleagues.

Extra Benefits…

• Enhanced Problem-Solving Skills: Bilingual individuals often demonstrate better problem-solving skills. They can approach problems from multiple linguistic and cultural perspectives, which can lead to more innovative solutions.
• Improved First-Language Skills: Paradoxically, bilingual education can also benefit a student’s first-language skills. In the process of learning a second language, students often gain a deeper understanding of the structure and grammar of their native language.
• Reduced Stereotyping and Bias: Bilingual education can reduce stereotypes and biases by promoting cross-cultural understanding. When students interact with peers from different linguistic backgrounds, they are more likely to challenge stereotypes and develop empathy.
• Bicultural Identity: Bilingual individuals often develop a bicultural identity, which allows them to feel at home in more than one culture. This can lead to a sense of belonging and connectedness to multiple communities.

Final Words

Bilingual Education programs can have several benefits, including improved academic achievement, cognitive benefits, enhanced cross-cultural understanding, and increased career opportunities. However, the success of BE programs depends on various factors.

Including the quality of instruction, support for students’ native languages and cultures, and the commitment of educators and the community. It’s important to note that the specific design and implementation of bilingual education programs can vary widely depending on the educational system, the needs of the students, and the goals of the program.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Teach educator.

"Teach Educator" is a dynamic and innovative platform designed to empower educators with the tools and resources they need to excel in their teaching journey. This comprehensive solution goes beyond traditional methods, offering a collaborative space where educators can access cutting-edge teaching techniques, share best practices, and engage in professional development.

Privacy Policy

Live Cricket Score

Recent Post

What is the Highest Salary Job?

March 22, 2024

Which Job is Most in Demand in Qatar? Requirements to work in Qatar

Qatar Airways Careers – How to Apply for Qatar Airways Jobs?

Copyright © 2024 Teach Educator

Privacy policy

Discover more from Teach Educator

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Type your email…

Continue reading