Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Educational and political dimensions of bilingual education 47
California’s LEP pupils were enrolled in any form of bilingual education program,
and that many of these pupils were not in fact taught by a fully credentialed
bilingual teacher.
Developmental Bilingual Education (DBE)
DBE, or maintenance bilingual education, is a strong form of bilingual education
(Baker 2001), which aims to maintain and enhance the pupil’s L1 while they acquire
the majority language (e.g. English), leading them to full bilingual proficiency and
biliteracy.
A defining characteristic is the continued use of the L1 as a medium of instruction
through elementary school for 50 per cent or more of the timetable. Teachers are
usually bilingual and committed to supporting the pupil’s L1 and its associated
culture. A key justification for the prominence given to the minority language in
school is that it is more likely to suffer attrition being not so well supported in the
out-of-school environment
Though data is not easy to come by, DBE and the similar late-exit transitional
bilingual education programs are thought to serve only a very small minority of LEP
pupils. An illustrative statistic is that of Thomas and Collier (1997: 55), who report
that only 7 per cent of students in their sample were enrolled in DBE.
Dual language (two-way bilingual education)
Majority and minority pupils attend this type of program in as close to equal
proportions as possible. Both groups are integrated for most content subjects and are
taught in two languages – for instance, Spanish and English. The overall program
aim is the development of proficiency in two languages, satisfactory academic
attainment at or above grade levels and positive cross-cultural attitudes.
Lindholm (1997, 2001) explains that there are two variants of the program: the
90:10 and the 50:50 model. In the former, 90 per cent of instruction in kindergarten
and grade 1 is in the minority language (e.g. Spanish) and 10 per cent in English –
making this effectively an immersion program for the majority language participants.
However, the proportion of instructional time allocated to the minority
language is progressively reduced so that by grade 5 or 6 instruction is equally
divided between the two languages.
The 50:50 variant, by contrast, starts with an equal distribution of time between
majority and minority language in kindergarten and continues with this proportion
through elementary school. An important feature of the methodology is that
language mixing (or concurrent language use) is discouraged. While teachers need to
be bilingual, they separate their two languages: the separation is usually based on
time of day, subject or occasionally by teacher – as, for example, in the team-teaching
that sometimes occurs in the early grades. Throughout the program efforts are made
to promote a bilingual/bicultural ethos and to encourage parental involvement
(Guzman 2002).
Dual language programs first emerged in the 1960s: the Coral Way Elementary
School of Dade County, Florida, is usually recognised as a pioneer. Another early