Introduction to my research in 2019

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you

talk to him in his language that goes to his heart.”

— Nelson Mandela

For centuries, waves of immigration have impacted our way of teaching. Immigration and education influenced many political debates.

Immigration, languages, education, and politics are tied together.

Education policies have played an important role in the inclusion of immigrant children. Depending on the perspective of immigration as positive or negative, politics have taken different positions.

For instance, after the second war, immigration was seen as a danger. Assimilation

is preferred. That’s why education policies are mostly in favor of subtracting the

language of immigrants in favor of the language of their “new country”. This also

happened during colonization. Spanish, French, and English languages were the

majority that was spread, and used to establish power over threatened populations.

During the twentieth century, bilingual education was organized with a monoglossic

belief, which legitimizes only the linguistic practices of monolinguals. This monoglossic

ideology gave power to some languages and devalued others. Here, bilingual

education is recognized in order to support students to become monolinguals in the

dominant language of their new country. These type of schools support a political

ideology that does not see the diversity as an asset, but sometimes as a threat.

Transitional schools were created in order to support the assimilation of the immigrant

into the nation. Nowadays, ‘one-language only’ movements still exist, as it is

challenging to deconstruct misconceptions. France has only one official language,

which is viewed by the majority, as the “cement of the nation.” However, it is

interesting to see that France is more complex than that. France is a multilingual

space where multiple regional languages, and languages inherited from immigration

coexist.

This monoglossic ideology, also promoted a type of bilingual education that we

called “additive bilingualism”. In this case, bilingualism is seen as an asset when the

goal is to become a bilingual with equal knowledge in both languages. This bilingual

education type carefully compartmentalizes each language with the belief that

interrelations between both languages can affect them negatively. Here, the

separation is encouraged, with the belief that a perfect bilingual can “acquire perfectly”

two “pure” languages. Under this monolingual ideology, a number of wrong

misconceptions have been promoted. This is perpetuated by some scholars who have

not seen the complexity of bilingual participants, and in turn, either assess them with

monolingual tools or underestimate other variables (socio-economic background).

Thankfully, those misconceptions started to receive criticism from scholars.

For the last two decades, bilingual education with a heteroglossic belief has

emerged, which brought rise to legitimate bilingual linguistic practices, such as

translanguaging practices. Here, inclusion and diversity are seen as an asset.

Research began to take into consideration that a bilingual is not two monolinguals

(Grosjean, 1989). These studies have shown that learning two or more languages

promotes cognitive, social, and professional development. It has been demonstrated

that language learning improves mental flexibility, concentration, creativity, and

memory. Bilinguals develop abilities to perform multiple tasks at the same time and

solve problems. Students will keep these assets all their life. Scholars have also

indicated that bi-plurilingual students grow up with an open outlook on the world and

develop intercultural competence. They aspire to become responsible and committed

citizens. Finally, there is proof that at the end of secondary school, bi-plurilingual

students have access to better opportunities for study, career, and career

development. All of these advantages have shed light onto a new type of bilingual

education where interrelation between languages is promoted. With this new vision of

bilingual education, bilingual institutions have continued to grow. However there is

still no consensus on the allocation and distribution of languages.

A gap exists between these recent studies that promote a dynamic way of using

languages, and bilingual programs which exist for decades and can be embedded

with a monoglossic ideology.

As a teacher myself in a bilingual school, I was interested in developing my practice.

I received my initial training in France, in order to teach in a monolingual mainstream

school. Then, I took an ongoing training to become a specialized teacher where I

develop tools and approaches to include all. I understood that in an educative system,

the equal treatment of all students can be tied with assimilation, while equity treatment

can be linked with stigmatization. Inclusive treatment is the one that I choose to

support all of my students. I believe that it is preferable that “the society” and “the

environment” adapt to the complexity of its “individuals”. Recognizing diversity is

recognizing the wealth of the inhabitants. It’s not the students who are inadequate to

the society but the society that is not adapted to its members. This vision is important

in order to understand that an effort should be made by the society to adapt, in order

to answer the needs of all individuals. As individuals, it’s complex and hard to adapt to

every case, however with a collaborative society we can answer bigger issues. With

this research, I wanted to better understand the situation in Bilingual Education.

Understanding the concept of plurilingualism made me understand how languages

cannot be separate in our linguistic practices. A bilingual person has his own holistic

linguistic repertoire rather than two separate ones. From my literature review, I

understood that plurilingual people have their own linguistic practices. I understood

that the communicative norm of bilingual communities are complex and different from

monolingual ones. The languages do not have a first or second place, and instead are

interrelated and contributing to the full repertoire of a plurilingual person. With this

holistic approach, I realized that inside a classroom, bilingual students should always

be able to use their full repertoire in order to succeed and to know and use their

normal bilingual discourse. In order to develop my practice, I always try to see a

student as a whole child, so I needed to better understand those practices to help

students to succeed. As a teacher in a dual-language immersion school, I was

wondering why the language separation still persists in some dual language schools.

How can teachers in dual-language schools address the needs of a linguistically and

culturally diverse classroom? With this research, I would like to show the advantages

and the challenges that a dual-language immersion school encounters while evolving

at the macro-level (administration), meso-level (between teachers) and micro-level

(inside the classroom) .

My research was guided by the following research question:

How does a bilingual school in northern California shift from a monoglossic

vision to a heteroglossic vision?

How a Northern Californian Bilingual School try to free itself from

monolinguistic ideologies to meet the needs of the 21st century, which is to

offer plurilingual skills to future citizens?

I chose to conduct a case study focusing intensively on a dual-immersion school in

California, in order to analyze its allocation of time between languages. Observations

gathered during internships show differences and similarities between the

organization of bilingual schools. Interviews with heads of school, coordinators,

teachers and parents offer insights into the challenges and advantages that this

bilingual school encounters, while moving from a strict separation of languages to

opening up space for the practice of translanguaging. The purpose is to essentially

understand that a lot of factors, from different levels, influence how a school moves

from a monoglossic ideology to a heteroglossic ideology.

#introduction #monoglossic #heteroglossic