Improving schooling for language-minority children: A research agenda

Bilingual Research Journal, Spring 1997 by Julie Maxwell-Jolly, Patricia Gandara

Another pervasive problem in the design of research in the field of second language acquisition is the inadequacy of measurements for most linguistic minority students under certain conditions, and for many linguistic minority students in virtually all conditions. The absence of theoretical agreement about the key elements of measurement in second language acquisition and its relationship to academic achievement results in tests that measure different things and are seldom comparable to each other (Gandara & Merino, 1993). Moreover, adequate tests for language groups other than Spanish speakers, and tests that accurately measure cognitive and academic development in linguistic minority students have not yet been developed.

In spite of all of these impediments, a number of large-scale program evaluation studies have been commissioned with the intent that they might settle the question, once and for all, of which program is "best". And, notwithstanding near Herculean efforts on the part of careful and committed researchers to address the weaknesses in the state of the art, each of the studies has suffered from both theoretical and methodological flaws that have made it impossible to answer that question. Nonetheless, as the Report points out, those intent upon promoting a particular agenda have not hesitated to use the findings to suit their own purposes, whether it be in support of a particular position or against it.

CURRENT STATE OF KNOWLEDGE: A SUMMARY OF RESEARCH IN THE FIELD

In this section we note some of the highlights of the Report's review of a substantial portion of the current knowledge in the field. The bulls of this knowledge base is drawn from small scale studies focused not on program evaluation but on learning processes in second language acquisition.

SUMMARY OF LANGUAGE, LITERACY, AND CONTENT LEARNING KNOWLEDGE (SECTIONS 2-3)

The authors of the Report remind us that researchers have been studying the issues of bilingualism and second language learning for almost a century. They observe that this research developed largely independently of the issues of schooling for linguistic minority students, although it forms the scientific foundation on which theories and education practices are based, Because findings in this area are extensive, we use an abbreviated bullet format in this section of our review.

A major focus of much second language acquisition research has been on the development of oral skills, that is, the ability to understand and speak the new language. Among the principal findings in this body of research are the following:

Different types of bilinguals, those who developed two languages from the outset of their language learning and those who learned a second language after their first, do not manifest different types of cognitive organization of their language skills (pp. 30-32).

More recent research refutes the notion that bilingualism could confuse the child both cognitively and linguistically, a belief based on conclusions drawn from research conducted in the early 1900s (Diaz, 1983). This research has been "largely discredited because of its failure to control for important variables, such as socioeconomic status, as well as the criteria used to select the bilingual samples ... When such variables were controlled for, the results were reversed in favor of bilinguals" (p. 32).