Bilingual Education

Bilingual education has often been defined simply as the use of two languages as the medium of instruction within a school curriculum. One of the languages used is the students' native language, and the other is the language used to educate students in a particular country–that is, the majority language. The specific purpose of bilingual education is to teach academic content to nonmajority language students and, in some models, to majority language students. A multitude of bilingual education models have developed over time.

The development of numerous bilingual education models, and whether they have predominant components of intercultural or assimilationist orientations, has been a reflection of the historical, political, economic, and social issues under debate at the time, all of which influence an individual's attitudes toward ...