While there are about 200 recognized sovereign nations, there are well over 6,000 languages spoken throughout the world. Because of increased migration, geographical proximity, and/or political conquest and colonization, few countries today can claim monolingualism as the norm. Moreover, globalization has placed English in a unique role in many school systems throughout the world. Bilingual and multilingual education is one form of schooling that has been developed worldwide in response to this linguistic and cultural diversity.

The terms bilingual students and bilingual education are sometimes confused. Bilingual children know and use two languages to different degrees. Depending on the nature of access to both languages, as well as attitudes toward the languages, bilingual children demonstrate varying proficiency in their two languages; for example, they may speak ...