Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

54 Language Planning and Education
effective programs at school level and on dissecting the factors that contribute to
their effectiveness, a form of research sometimes labelled ‘school effectiveness’
research. And from this research, as summarised by August and Hakuta (1997:
75–82), comes the not unsurprising findings that among the attributes of effective
schools are strong leadership by the principal, staff with high expectations of LEP
pupils and a commitment to their achievement, instruction adapted to the needs of
the pupils, systematic student assessment, a balanced curriculum, use of the pupils’
native language, high levels of parental involvement and a gradual, well-organised
transition from special language instruction to mainstream classes.
Implicit here throughout, of course, is the assumption, shared by Cummins
(1998) that BE, specifically the use of the child’s home language in school, is no
panacea, no guarantor of success, and that bilingual programs of any type may be
well or poorly implemented.
Another, more radical, response to the disappointing utility of program evaluations
comes from Cummins (1988, 1999, 2000), who complains that the evaluative
research has been inattentive to testing theoretical principles underlying bilingual
education programs. Thus, he criticises August and Hakuta’s (1997) research review
for the National Research Council, favourable though it is to the benefits of L1
instruction for LEP pupils, for focusing unduly on research findings in isolation
from the theory that provides a principled, sounder basis for their interpretation. In
place of the unmediated interpretation of research findings, Cummins proposes an
alternative paradigm for bilingual education research, labelled the ‘research-theorypolicy
paradigm’ (Cummins 2000: 213), in which theory has an expanded role.
A theoretical framework, Cummins points out, allows the generation of predictions
about program outcomes under varying conditions. It allows us to integrate
findings from studies conducted in different contexts and thereby to refine hypotheses
from which further predictions can be deduced and tested. It also extends the
scope of policy-relevant research beyond those studies with a matched treatmentcontrol
group design to, in principle, smaller-scale case studies reporting program
outcomes against which the predictions of theory can be assessed.
One of the better known theoretical frameworks derives from Cummins’s own
work in which he proposes a set of theoretical principles to account for the outcomes
of bilingual education in different settings. It is to these that we now turn, examining
them through the prism of the debate over Proposition 227.
3.2.3 Proposition 227 and theories of bilingual education
Proposition 227, adopted by California voters in June 1998, states that:
all children in California public schools shall be taught English by being taught in
English. In particular, this shall require that all children be placed in English
language classrooms. Children who are English learners shall be educated through
sheltered English immersion during a temporary transition period not normally
intended to exceed one year. (Cited in Crawford 1999: 302)