What is bilingual and multilingual education? In the simplest definition, bilingual education is the use of two languages for learning and teaching in an instructional setting and, by extension, multilingual education would be the use of three languages or more. In a narrower definition, literacy is developed and/or specific content areas are taught through the medium of two or more languages in an organized and planned education program. In most cases, one of these is the “home,” “native,” or “mother-tongue” language, and one is the “dominant” societal language or a “powerful” international language. In multilingual education settings, the other languages may be dominant regional languages. However, as will be shown throughout this handbook, even these basic concepts such as language, home language, dominant language, native speaker, bilingual, multilingual, and bilingual and multilingual education are highly complex and contested constructs; thus considerations about which languages or varieties of languages to use as media of instruction are not always straightforward. Because education is most often the responsibility of nation states with artificial (and contested) geographical boundaries encompassing many—and oftentimes dividing—linguistic groups, decisions about bilingual and multilingual education are highly political, and influenced by a variety of historical, economic, and sociocultural factors.
For example, in 1998 a formal debate over bilingual education was held at California State University Long Beach, in the context of the Proposition 227 Campaign to pass a law restricting the state’s bilingual programs through mandates for English-medium instruction. The first author (Wright) was present during the heated exchanges, and listened incredulously as the local chairperson for the Proposition 227 Campaign—an elementary school teacher in Orange County—claimed that bilingual education was a “failed experiment,” that “we only do bilingual programs for Spanish speakers,” and that “other countries don’t do bilingual education, only the United States!”
At the time of this debate, Wright was teaching in a Cambodian (Khmer) bilingual education program at an elementary school just a few miles away. The second author (Boun) was a senior in high school in Cambodia learning both English and Khmer, and later studied at a multilingual university—the Royal University of Phnom Penh. The third author (García) was a former Spanish–English bilingual teacher in New York City, a professor conducting research on bilingualism and bilingual education in New York City and internationally, that year along the Uruguay–Brazil border as a Fulbright Scholar.
As our personal experiences illustrate, political attacks, misinformation, and outright falsehoods often permeate debates over bilingual and multilingual education. Ironically, during this period of renewed attacks on bilingual education in the United States, other countries around the world were turning to bilingual and multilingual education to address linguistic realities and student needs. UNESCO and UNICEF, for example, promote mother-tongue-based multilingual education as a key component of education reform assistance to developing nations struggling to provide universal access to a basic education. Other nations with historically homogeneous populations are also beginning to turn to bilingual and multilingual education to address the realities of demographic change.
In the United States between 1998 and 2002, three states (California, Arizona, and Massachusetts) passed anti-bilingual education laws (G. McField, 2014), and federal education policy—the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001—removed all mention, encouragement, and direct financial support of bilingual education (Menken, 2008). However, the tides are beginning to change. After 15 years of anti-bilingual legislation in these three states, bilingual programs have been restricted, but not eliminated. Waiver provisions, loopholes, and differing interpretations of the laws by various policy makers provided space for many schools to continue or even expand bilingual education programs. In California, legislative efforts are now underway to reverse Proposition 227 and undo the harm caused by the ill-informed law (McGreevy, 2014). Even with Proposition 227 still in place, California became the first state in the United States to recognize the valuable linguistic skills of graduating bilingual students by awarding a “Seal of Biliteracy” on their high school diplomas—a model now being replicated in other states, including New York and Texas (see http://sealofbiliteracy.org/).
Thus, bilingual and multilingual education is alive and well and expanding. Indeed, in a world with only 196 “nation states” but over 7,000 named spoken languages (Lewis, Simons, & Fennig, 2013), bilingual and multilingual education is essential. As García (2009) has argued, in the 21st Century “bilingual education, in all its complexities and forms, seems to be the only way to educate as the world moves forward” (p. 6).
Nonetheless, there are a wide variety of often conflicting ideologies, theories, policies, and practices surrounding bilingual and multilingual education throughout the world. In some cases, bilingual education may even be misused to limit access and opportunities for linguistic minority students. This speaks to the great need for a comprehensive Handbook of Bilingual and Multilingual Education to: (1) discuss the theoretical foundations and present bilingual and multilingual education as a current, strong, and cutting-edge field; (2) provide a broad overview of the historical development and current status of the field; (3) provide vivid critical examples of policy and practice in action; and (4) move the field forward by rethinking older constructs and introducing fresh ideas that better reflect and address the reality of our multilingual, multicultural, and increasingly globalized world.
The only attempt at a comprehensive internationally focused handbook on bilingual education was in 1988 in an edited volume by Christina Bratt Paulston containing 27 chapters each focused on a different country or region of the world. While this collection of individual case studies was highly informative, it did not lay out the theoretical foundations of the field. Important textbooks in the late 1980s and early 1990s helped solidify the field of bilingual education by providing educators with theory, research, and practical suggestions, including, for example, Ovando and Collier (1985), Crawford (1989), and Baker (1993). These key early textbooks have all subsequently been updated to 5th editions (Baker, 2011; Crawford, 2004; Ovando & Combs, 2011). The Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism edited by Baker and Jones (1999), and the more recent Encyclopedia of Bilingual Education edited by González (2008), in addition to the 2nd edition of the ten-volume Encyclopedia of Language and Education (May & Hornberger, 2008) with Volume 5 focused on Bilingual Education (edited by Jim Cummins and Nancy Hornberger) cover a wide range of topics, and have further established bilingual and multilingual education as an important academic field. Recent books and scholarship, including García’s (2009) Bilingual Education in the 21st Century, have helped challenge some of our cherished constructs and underlying theoretical foundations, and have introduced new terms and ways of conceptualizing key issues as we move forward in our rapidly changing world.
Overview and organization
This Handbook builds on the excellent prior work described above by providing both depth and breadth across three major sections: (1) Foundations for Bilingual and Multilingual Education, (2) Pedagogical Issues and Practices in Bilingual and Multilingual Education, and (3) Global Dimensions of Bilingual and Multilingual Education. The 41 chapters in this Handbook are authored by 78 distinguished, well-known, and rising scholars from around the world. Collectively their chapters provide case studies of, or draw examples from, specific countries and regions from all continents of the earth except Antarctica.
Authors in Sections 1 and 2 were asked to provide an historical overview of their topic, discuss the current state of knowledge with a focus on methodological and theoretical issues and problem areas, and discuss future directions. Authors of the country/region-specific chapters in Section 3 were asked to provide a brief historical overview, a brief summary of the current state of bilingual/multilingual education, and then discuss a specific case or provide a focus on one or more of the specific issues in their region/country. These chapters in Section 3 provide vivid examples of the issues raised and discussed in Sections 1 and 2.
Foundations for bilingual and multilingual education
Given the interdisciplinary nature of the field of bilingual and multilingual education, the 10 chapters in Section 1 bring in a wide variety of theoretical foundations informed by diverse academic fields. The authors in this section challenge some long-held notions and push us to consider new ways of conceptualizing and understanding our multilingual world. In Chapter 2 Angel Lin argues that, while sociolinguistics has focused on sociopolitical and sociocultural aspects of bi/multilingualism, there is a need for a better understanding of bi/multilingualism and bilingual education as a response to the human condition in a contemporary world marked by global crises, oppression, resistance, and increasing fragmentation. She introduces the term “grassroots trans-semiotizing” to highlight the varied ways local and trans-local actors make creative use of multiple kinds of semiotics (not just written and spoken language) to make meaning and build trans-local internetworks and communities. Lin gives specific examples of trans-semiotizing practices of a Hong Kong-based hip-hop artist who meshes local vernaculars and musical styles in a manner that has global (trans-local) currency.
At one low point in academic reasoning about bilingualism, some scholars in the early to mid 20th century conjectured that bilingualism was negatively correlated with attempted measures of “intelligence” (see Hakuta, 1986for a review). In Chapter 3 Anatoily Kharkhurin provides evidence that bilingual practices not only lead to cognitive advantages in some areas, but also that these strengthened cognitive mechanisms may also increase the creative potential of bilinguals. Based on these findings, Kharkhurin proposes an educational model that incorporates bilingual and creative aspects of human development.
Bilingual and multilingual education, along with other language education fields, has been strongly influenced by theories from the field of second language acquisition (SLA). In Chapter 4, Guadalupe Valdés, Luis Poza, and Maneka Brooks challenge longstanding cognitivist orientations of SLA that focus on language as an individual process with the goal of linear progress in acquiring a grammatical system and language proficiency equivalent to that of a “native speaker.” Valdés, Poza, and Brooks identify and discuss two important shifts that have resulted from the “social turn” in SLA research: changing perspectives on language, and changing theoretical positions in SLA. These socially oriented shifts move away from unrealistic deficit-oriented expectations for students such as “native-like proficiency,” error-free production, or becoming balanced bilinguals (i.e., two fully proficient monolinguals in one). Instead, the authors argue for a sociocultural view of SLA as a process “leading to repertoires or linguistic resources termed multi-competence or plurilingualism.” This in turn has the “potential of informing and enriching the design of classroom environments in which students would be able to experience multiple ways of using both their home language and English for a variety of academic purposes in both their written and oral forms.”
Literacy instruction is typically the most contested and ideologically driven content area in the school curriculum (Edelsky, 2006). Viv Edwards in Chapter 5 notes that teachers in bilingual and multilingual classrooms must often resort to reinventing “pedagogical practices devised with monolingual, more culturally homogenous populations in mind.” However, she argues that, with our broader and deeper understanding of the extent, nature, and complexity developed over recent decades, we “now have a much clearer idea of the pedagogies that more closely meet the needs of multilingual learning communities in relation to both learning in general and literacy learning in particular.” Despite this clearer picture of what needs to be included in teacher education, and why it needs to be included, the real challenge, Edwards asserts, is “how teachers can best be supported to make the necessary changes.”
In Chapter 6, Laura Valdiviezo and Sonia Nieto acknowledge cultural diversity as foundational in bilingual/multilingual education; culture is learned, thus biculturalism is one of the goals of bilingual education. However, Valdiviezo and Nieto argue that culture has been misunderstood theoretically and misapplied in practice. Given that culture is “dynamic...
