A Typology of Bilingual Education

Abstract

ABSTRACT: What is needed for planning and research in bilingual education is not more and better definitions but a simple and complete typology based on the only common denominator—the use of two or more languages. The distribution of these languages throughout the entire learning environment (structured and unstructured) is the basis of this typology. The languages are distributed in time and space (home‐school‐area‐nation). This distribution generates a number of basic patterns. The structured distribution within the school covering a given length of the schooling time produces curriculum patterns based on: medium (single vs. dual) maintenance, transfer (acculturation vs. irredentism) and transition (gradual vs. abrupt). Each of these patterns exists in two sorts of relationships—the school‐home relation and the school‐environment (area and nation) relation. Five types of school‐home relation and nine types of school‐environment relation, coupled with the curriculum patterns, cover all theoretically possible types. This would provide a framework within which measurements of the status and function of the languages used and of the distance between them would facilitate planning, research, and comparison.

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