Maria Estela Brisk

Bilingual Education : From Compensatory To Quality Schooling

Contents: Preface. Pursuing Successful Schooling. Bilingual Education Debate. Contextual and Individual Factors: Support and Challenges. Creating a Good School. Creating Quality Curricula. Creating Quality Instruction. Beyond the Debate.

A Study of a Collaborative Instructional Project Informed by Systemic Functional Linguistic Theory: Report Writing in Elementary Grades.

The current study examines the teaching of report writing from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade through the lens of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) theory. Teachers were part of a university and public school collaboration that included professional development on teaching genres, text organization, and language features. Grounded in this knowledge, teachers explicitly taught students to write reports. Results indicate that students understood the purpose of reports. Although report writing was challenging, students at all levels, supported by their teachers, presented the topic in an organized way, showed awareness of audience and voice, and used language that resulted in coherent writing.

Defining and Documenting Success for Bilingual Learners: A Collective Case Study.

Abstract This article examines the difficulties inherent to measuring bilingual program success and the need for broader and fairer assessment strategies for bilingual students. Drawing from our collective case study, we confirm that there are significant data sources available and accessible to the schools/programs but that their formats are not easily comprehensible for schools attempting to showcase their programs. We also report how the collection and compilation of assessment is primarily in the hands of the school administrators and, thus, may not be efficiently used for the improvement of teaching and learning. Despite the difficulties of data gathering and the shortcomings on the use of information, we suggest that in the schools studied, the evidence we gathered supported their perspectives on success.

Language Policies in American Education.

This paper outlines the historical evolution of language policies in American education. It traces the multilingual history of the United States, citing several cases where children were taught in their native language, thus belying the myth that bilingual education is a new phenomenon in this country. While multilingual education and cultural diversity were accepted during the 19th century, the massive immigration of Eastern and Southern Europeans from the 1880s until the first World War created a sharp reaction on the part of educational policymakers, and the trend turned sharply in favor of assimilation and against cultural and linguistic pluralism. From the end of the 19th century until the 1950s, English was strictly imposed as the national language and the mandatory language of instruction. It is only in the last two decades that linguistic minorities have asserted their right to cultural and linguistic maintenance. The paper further discusses the important state and federal court cases which have had an effect on present bilingual education legislation, and the enforcement of that legislation. It points out some of the major questions which need to be addressed in the development of a national language policy. The case made for introducing literacy in the native language for linguistic minority children should serve as a guideline for future language policy in the United States.

Bilingual Fourth Graders Develop a Central Character for Their Narratives

A narrative is a special kind of story that is highly valued in English-speaking cultures. Narratives tell an imaginative story, although sometimes they are based on facts. There are many types of narratives, such as legends, myths, and historical fiction. Narratives are structured to be entertaining and t o teach cultural values. In narratives, normal events are disrupted and language is used to build up suspense until the plot reaches a crisis point. The basic stages of narratives are orientation, complication, evaluation, and resolution (Labov & Waletsky, 1967; Martin & Rose, 2008). A narrative may end with a writer’s evaluative comment (Butt, Fahey, Feez, Spinks, & Yallop, 2000; Education Department of Western Australia, 1994; Schleppegrell, 2004). Across different cultures, narratives share a similar organization, but what makes for a complicating event and resolution may differ (Martin & Rose, 2008).

An Integrated Bilingual Curriculum Model

The purpose of this paper is to directly contribute to the improvement and successful implementation of integrated bilingual education at the kindergarten level. It first offers a theoretical framework including a brief review of the literature on the importance of attitudes and second language learning, bilingualism and cognition, and bilingualism and language acquisition. Based on this theoretical framework, an integrated curriculum model is presented. Bilingual kindergartens were suggested in the Plan for School Desegregation in Boston in 1975. It was not until 1977 that their implementation began. An integrated bilingual kindergarten consisted of having minority language children and a minority language teacher share a classroom with an English teacher and English speaking children. Team teaching in an integrated kindergarten classroom was a new experience for almost all involved. The potential benefits, however, of a linguistically integrated situation were being neglected. In this situation both cul...

Transforming Education by Embracing Bilingual Learners

Abstract This commentary addresses the content of this issue from the perspective of educating bilingual learners. Several articles propose the kind of coursework and field experiences needed for the preparation of teacher candidates to be qualified to work effectively with bilingual populations. Others report on specific aspects of teacher preparation. The author proposes that teaching bilingual learners needs to be seen as an opportunity for improving the education of all students.

Mainstream Classrooms as Engaging Spaces for Emergent Bilinguals: SFL Theory, Catalyst for Change

This chapter discusses how a sustained collaboration among a principal, researchers and teachers supported a shift in the monolingual culture of an elementary school. Specifically, the study explores how a longitudinal professional development initiative supported monolingual teachers in developing effective writing instruction for emergent bilingual learners. Data was collected through participant-observation during the literacy block of three teachers who had emergent bilinguals in their classroom. Drawing on grounded theory, videotape transcripts and field notes were analyzed to characterize teachers’ practices, and their emergent bilingual students’ participation. Findings point to the ways in which their SFL-informed writing approach with its Teaching and Learning Cycle resulted in full participation of emergent bilinguals and the use of hybrid language practices in previously English-only classroom environments.

Applying Systemic Functional Linguistics to Build Educators’ Knowledge of Academic English for the Teaching of Writing

The studies presented in this chapter highlight promising ways to foster inservice teachers and teacher candidates’ knowledge of the complexities of academic English using systemic functional linguistics (SFL). This linguistic understanding is required in order to successfully teach writing in multilingual classrooms that include native speakers of English, where English is the medium of instruction. Findings indicate inservice teachers’ newfound linguistic knowledge enacted changes to writing pedagogy. Specifically, teachers’ writing instruction with elementary students emphasized genre, language, and tenor. Moreover, the teachers used a greater repertoire of teaching strategies to teach content, such as deconstruction and joint construction of text. Similarly, changes to teacher candidates’ proposed writing instruction resulted in an increased focus on genre and language. The building of the inservice teachers and teacher candidates’ comprehension of academic English emerged through ongoing professional development and coursework. This learning was facilitated using SFL. This theory of language provided the theoretical lens to examine texts and the metalanguage to discuss genre and language. Developing inservice teachers and teacher candidates’ linguistic knowledge required a significant amount of time and commitment. Educators’ developed comprehension of language appears to promote robust classroom instruction that more effectively develops pupils into proficient and purposeful writers.

Infant Language Education

There is a controversy among child language researchers about the effect of input on child language acquisition throughout the years of development. This controversy was the result of arguments about whether language development is the result of the environment shaping behavior, or the result of a child’s unique abilities to process language information. This is what has been labeled the “nature-nurture” argument. There has now been a great deal of data collected about the infancy years, and the influences that appear to affect language development during this period. Some of these influences are from the environment. Others are due to the innate abilities of the infant to process various kinds of sensory information. The answer to the nature-nurture argument is that both are involved. The question for educators of infants is what in the input of the environment assists in the development of language in this period.