A Synthesis of Research on Bilingual and Multilingual Education

Bilingual and multilingual education has a history that can be counted in hundreds of years rather than a few decades, but research on such education is quite recent. The tradition of single-school/program research continues, particularly with evaluations of particular aspects of bilingual education. The accumulation of research on individual programs, schools, and classrooms inevitably leads to the need for reviews of the many “single” pieces of research. The current state of our knowledge about bilingual and multilingual education is complex, kaleidoscopic, and sometimes conflictive as there are many different types of bilingual education. One strand in research on bilingual education compares the effectiveness of different models of education for bilingual children. Research on U.S. dual language (two-way immersion) schools has a long and strong tradition. The research evaluations of dual language, immersion and heritage-language education show successful bilingual education in terms of bilingualism, biliteracy, and achievement across the curriculum.