A Two-Way Bilingual Program: Promise, Practice, and Precautions

• Main Authors: Calderon, Margarita, Carreon, Argelia
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: For full text: http://: www 01.09.2000
• Subjects: Change Strategies; Classroom Techniques; Educational Change; Elementary Secondary Education; English (Second Language); Foreign Countries; Language Minorities; Mexico; Multicultural Education; Politics of Education; Professional Development; Program Evaluation; Proposition 227 (California 1998); Second Language Instruction; Second Language Learning; Spanish Speaking; Student Evaluation; Teacher Education; Two Way Immersion Programs; Vygotsky (Lev S); Mexico

In spite of political pressure, bilingualism is emerging as a strategy for improving the academic achievement of all students. Two-way bilingual or dual-language programs integrate language-minority and language-majority students for instruction in two languages. Site-based decision making has enabled schools in cities that border with Mexico to implement two-way bilingual programs in which minority and majority students can become bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural. Complex instruction for the binational context requires that teachers combine a profound knowledge of subject matter with a wide repertoire of teaching strategies, states of the art knowledge about learning theory, cognition, pedagogy, curriculum, technology, and assessment. The education of language minority students is dependent on the degree to which these children have access to instruction that is challenging yet comprehensible. This report focuses on one effort to implement comprehensive, two-way bilingual programs in four schools. The goals of this project included the following: (1) to document the design, implementation, and program adjustments of the two-way bilingual program; (2) to analyze teacher performance and professional development in the context of implementing complex change; (3) to identify the pedagogical variables that facilitate or impede learning through two languages simultaneously; (4) to identify the most promising program features and the school structures for program implementation, and the role of the principal within these. The report accomplishes this in four successive sections, followed by a fifth summary section discussing implications and recommendations. (Contains 133 references.) (KFT)