Bilingual Education In Pluralistic Societies: Policy And Practice

Bilingual education can be defined from two aspects, the broad one and the narrow one. The former refers to the school education of using two languages while the later refers to the school education of using a second or a foreign language to teach non-language academic subjects. Bilingual education has currently been a highlight in our education innovation. However, some bottle-neck problems, such as bilingual education policies, are greatly challenging us while experimenting it. This dissertation attempts to discuss the bilingual education policies through the dimensions of theoretic, comparative and practical studies, which the author hopes will offer some implications for policy-makers and those who are interested in bilingual education.The whole dissertation includes six parts, which are Introduction and Chapter One to Chapter Five. The Introduction analyses the research background, documentations, relevant concepts and some key issues on bilingual education policies. Chapter One focuses on theoretical study, which discusses three kinds of classical theories: a typology of bilingual education by William F. Mackey, a theory on bilingual education policy by William F. Mackey and Von Nieda Beede, and a theory on bilingual education planning by J. Rubin. Chapter Two focuses on the comparative study of five countries and areas, which are famous for bilingual education in East Asia, and particularly pays attention to Singapore's and Hong Kong's bilingual education policies and practice. Chapter Three focuses on practical study of our country's bilingual education, especially Shanghai's practice. Chapter four is a case study, which discusses Yangpu Primary School's five-year experiment on bilingual education through the level of policy-implementation. Chapter Five offers some initial thoughts on and suggestions to our bilingual education's development.Lastly, the author firmly believes that, in order to our nation's strategic benefit and individual future development, no matter what great difficulties, bilingual education will finally bring much more social values than what it will cost.