Forging Multilingual Spaces: Integrating Perspectives on Majority and Minority Bilingual Education

This book offers a new perspective for research in the field of bilingual education by proposing an integrated approach to the study of bilingualism in minority and majority settings. Programmes for indigenous groups, for national minorities and for migrants are analysed together with programmes aimed at dominant language groups, by well-known scholars from eight different countries in Europe and the Americas. Each contribution seeks to go beyond the traditional dichotomy between policy, practice and research into bilingual education programmes for majority language speakers, and modalities offered for minority language speakers. Thus, the book argues for the construction of a shared discourse for research into bilingualism and bilingual education and for the adoption of an ecological perspective on language education.

Christine Hélot is emeritus professor of English at the University of Strasbourg, France. As a sociolinguist, her research focuses on language in education policies in France and in Europe, bi-multilingual education, intercultural education, language awareness, early childhood education, and children’s literature and multiliteracy. In 1988 she obtained her PhD from Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland) for a thesis on bilingualism in the family and in 2005 she was awarded an Habilitation (University of Strasbourg) for her research on bi/plurilingualism at school. Dr Hélot was a lecturer at the University of Ireland before returning to France and since then has been a guest professor in Spain, Germany, Japan, and the USA. She has published widely in French and English, and co-edited several volumes on bilingual and multilingual education. Her research on critical language awareness was the subject of a documentary film entitled "Raconte-moi ta langue/Tell me how you talk": https://vimeo.com/402284515

Anne-Marie de Mejía works in the Centre for Research and Development in Education at Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. She has a Ph. D in Linguistics in the area of Bilingual Education. Her research interests include bilingual classroom interaction, process of teacher empowerment and bilingual teacher development.