Bilingual Education: What the Research Tells Us
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- Stephen May 5
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This chapter explores key research findings about bilingual education and the related efficacy of various approaches to teaching bilingual students. Its principal focus is on the research to date on the most common forms of bilingual education. This research consistently supports the efficacy of bilingual education, particularly when it is predicated on additive bilingual principles. Even so, ongoing public opposition to bilingual education, often highly misinformed, remains strong. The chapter also examines recent research around the notions of “dynamic bilingualism” and “translanguaging,” along with their pedagogical implications for existing bilingual programs.
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Key Concepts in Bilingual Education
Research Perspectives on Bilingualism and Bilingual Education
Not all Indigenous communities accept heritage bilingual programs as an appropriate overarching term – as evident, most clearly, in the rejection of the term by many First Nations peoples in Canada (Cummins, personal communication).
This diagram was developed in conjunction with my colleague, Richard Hill and is loosely based on an earlier diagram by Hornberger ( 1991 ). It was previously published in May ( 2010 ).
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May, S. (2016). Bilingual Education: What the Research Tells Us. In: Garcia, O., Lin, A., May, S. (eds) Bilingual and Multilingual Education. Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02324-3_4-1
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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02324-3_4-1
Received : 16 October 2015
Accepted : 13 November 2015
Published : 19 April 2016
Publisher Name : Springer, Cham
Online ISBN : 978-3-319-02324-3
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Jan 4, 2017 · Research shows that in addition to cognitive benefits, bilingual education can have economic benefits for young people in terms of employment (Kim et al., 2015).
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