Untitled

saxelmwifo enis swavlebis sakiTxebi:
problemebi da gamowvevebi
Issues of State Language Teaching;
Problems and Challenges
Whereas the linguistic situation, problems in the bilingual education process and those related to the
teaching of the official language differ in Tbilisi and regions with compactly inhabited non-Georgian-speaking
population, for the evident result we have sampled as the target-group the principals of 6 Tbilisi schools (26%)
and 17 schools (74%) of the compactly inhabited regions. The school principals were selected for the targetgroup
of the research as they are directly involved in the piloting process and obtain the information about the
linguistic and educational situation in the school as well as about the attitude of the community and society
towards the bilingual education in general.
Within the qualitative research was made the interview with the Latvian expert of the High Commissioner
on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE/HCHM) Ms.
Ligita Grigule. Her experience of many years was very useful for us in line of the interesting and reliable information
especially at the first stage of the research. We have also held the interview with the multilingual
education expert Mr. Davit Zatiashvili which has been working on this issue since 2010 as the representative
of the National Curriculum and Assessment Center and is directly involved in the process of perfection and
approval of the multilingual education application forms filed by schools and holds the information about
what threats and contradictions exist in the process of piloting of the programs. For the research we have used
the questionnaire intended for the half-structured interview which has provided maximum information at the
expense of minimum time and resources especially at the initial stage of the research. The data were gathered
in frames of the depth interview round several important problems based on the results of which the structured
questionnaire for the quantitative research was created.
The important source of the secondary information for the research was the report “Bilingual Education
in Georgia” (Grigule, Perrin, 2007 and DEDZE2007) where the analysis of activities in line of the multilingual
education implemented in Georgia until 2007 is provided. The information obtained from the multilingual
education application forms filed by the schools was also very important from the aspect of data regarding
each concrete school thereof. Based on the analysis of the secondary information and qualitative research
was compiled the 44-item questionnaire designed for pilot school principals for gathering quantitative data.
The questionnaire consists of three blocks: the first part contains eight questions of the inquiry form – general
information about a respondent, region/city and ethic groups in the school and so on. Twenty-five questions of
the second block regarded the problems existing in the school from the aspect of the bilingual teaching. The
respondents should give their answers according to the 4-score scale (1. Don’t agree at all; 2. Don’t agree; 3.
Agree; 4. Totally agree). Eleven questions of the third block were aimed at obtaining information about the
interest in the multilingual education programs in the schools and in the languages - throughout the region in
general.
As a result of the research was checked out the hypothesis that the process of introduction of bilingual
education faces many contradictions and problems that may be counterproductive if each problem is not thoroughly
studied, analyzed and if the results thereof are not taken into account in the piloting process.
Research framework and reliability:
� As a result of testing of the questionnaire it was found out that a great part of open questions were left
answerless by the majority of respondents. For this reason in the final version of the questionnaire all
questions were closed. At the end of the questionnaire was allocated a place for the additional opinion
which was ignored by 91.3% of the respondents or where they have fixed the opinion provided as the answer
to the concrete question in the previous items.
� The principals often stated their own attitude to various matters but refused to record it (in kind of a video-
or audio-material).
� The questionnaire was translated into the Russian language because the majority of principals do not
know Georgian language;
� The electronic version of the questionnaire was made (in Georgian and Russian languages) which we intended
to use as an alternative facility for the involvement of the majority of schools in the research.
However, electronic format could be used only in Tbilisi schools because the Internet is not available in
the schools of the region though the majority of schools have the computer classes.
� In process of quantitative research the percent of lost questionnaires or unanswered questions was insignificant;
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