The Role and Use of Educational Theory in Formulating Language Policy

Although most politicians and policy-makers realize the necessity to pay lip-service to research in formulating educational policy and programs insofar as all initiatives must be justified as being "in the best interests of children", it is not difficult to see that research and theory are coherently applied to policy only in situations where there is a relatively high degree of consensus in regard to both the societal and educational goals of the policy debates relating to language and education.Two of these debates are bilingual education programs in the United States and French immersion programs in Canada.I shall argue that in both these cases, the sociological context of the debate, i.e. the power relations between dominant and subordinate groups in the society, plays a major role in determining the choice of issues to investigate, the conduct of the research, the interpretation of findings.and the relevance they assume for policy.In short, the relation between research, theory and policy can be understood only in the context of what Paulston (1980) terms a "conflict" paradigm where group conflicts over values, resources, and power are explictly taken into account. The Relation Between Research, Theory and PolicyIn the United States, controversy has raged for almost twenty years on appropriate ways of educating minority language children.Bilingual programs were mandated by the Office of Civil Rights in their interpretation of the Supreme Court's Lau v. Nichols decision in 1974, but there still exists no consensus regarding the effectiveness of such programs and many educators and policy-makers have expressed fears that bilingual education is "unAmerican" and will balkanize the country.A major reason why many policy-makers and educators in the United States regard the research basis for bilingual education as minimal or even non-existent is that they have failed to realize that data or "facts" from bilingual programs become interpretable for policy purposes only within the context of a coherent theory.It is the theory rather than the individual research findings that permits the generation of predictions about pro-LANGUAGE THEQRY & POLICY II