Bilingualism and bilingual education in Aboriginal communities

[Alvino Fantini]

Dear Colleague: It may be of help for you to know that my organization, 
World Learning, sponsored a conference in Guatemala City a few years ago 
addressing the topic of indigenous education in the Americas. We invited 700 
(mostly) indigenous educators from throughout the Americas (Canada to the 
tip of Chile) to discuss issues of early bilingual education. Much to the 
participants' surprise, they found, of course, that they had similar 
questions, faced similar challenges, and often were seeking similar 
solutions.
 
Selected proceedings from this conference are written up in the SIT 
Occasional Paper Series, Winter 2003, titled "La Educacion Indigena en las 
Americas" (Indigenous Education in the Americas), a Spanish Edition with 
English translations of all abstracts and some other materials. To access 
this journal online, go to www.sit.edu/publications, and click on Issue No. 
4.

I hope this will be of some help to you. With best wishes,
Alvino Fantini
Professor Emeritus, School for International Training

 
Dr Alvino E. Fantini, Professor Emeritus, SIT
Professor, Graduate School, MA in Language Communication
Kenkyu Research Center Bldg No. 1, 
Matsuyama University, 
4-2 Bunkyo-cho, Matsuyama, Ehime 790-85, Japan
Office tel: 089 926 7548 (Ext 42 / Cell tel: 080 5660 3640


-----Original Message-----
From: Yvan Rose <yrose at mun.ca>
To: info-childes at mail.talkbank.org
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 13:00:09 -0230
Subject: Bilingualism and bilingual education in Aboriginal communities


Dear colleagues,
I was recently contacted by the school board of a Canadian Aboriginal  
community. They requested me to provide them with information on  
bilingualism and bilingual acquisition in an Aboriginal context. They  
would like to consider such information for the structuring of their  
educational programs in the communities under that school board's  
umbrella.

Here is some more background information:
--The children from these communities are typically raised  
monolingual in the Aboriginal language, unless they come from  
bilingual households
--Schooling from Grade 1 through 3 is in the Aboriginal language(Cree- 
medium), using the syllabic orthographic system
--Starting at Grade 3, education in primarily oral English or French  
(the decision being made by the children/their families) is  
introduced, at which point the roman alphabet is also introduced
--Under current assessments, children hailing from this system  
generally have a deficit in literacy proficiency at the end of their  
primary education (in both languages)
--Decision makers are trying to tackle the issue while at the same  
time keeping an educational system that will enable the preservation  
of their traditional language and culture

In this context, I would appreciate it if you could point me towards  
documentation that pertains to bilingual acquisition in Aboriginal  
contexts as well as, perhaps from a more applied perspective, studies  
on educational programs and/or their relationships with cultural  
promotion and preservation.

Of course I will make sure to round up the information and publish a  
summary on the list.

Thankfully yours,
Yvan Rose

Associate Professor
Department of Linguistics
Memorial University of Newfoundland
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