In this presentation, I suggest that strict language allocation in bilingual programs may – perhaps unwittingly – encourage transmissive, rather than student-centred learning. Data are drawn from a longitudinal study investigating a whole-school Japanese-English primary bilingual program in Australia. Language use was investigated in both English and Japanese-medium classrooms over three years.
The incorporation of students’ home languages into teaching and learning has long been understood as beneficial, and theorisations of language are moving away from language separation and proposing a more holistic linguistic repertoire (e.g., García & Li, 2014). However, the importance of language status when considering the use of more than one language in the classroom has also been noted and caution urged (Ballinger, Lyster, Sterzuk & Genesee, 2017). In this presentation, while cognisant of this caution, I will suggest that strict allocation of languages to different classrooms in bilingual programs may – perhaps unwittingly – encourage transmissive, rather than student-centred learning. Data are drawn from an ongoing design-based study (see McKenney & Reeves, 2018) investigating the transition of a whole-school Japanese-English primary bilingual program in Australia from 30 percent of Japanese-language instruction to a 50:50 model. In the program, over 80% of the students were language-background-other-than-English (LBOTE) second-generation migrants. Data were collected from English-medium and Japanese-medium classroom observations, teacher interviews, student work samples, teachers’ lesson plans and teachers’ after-lesson written reflections over the course of three years (2017-2019). Findings revealed that it was difficult for Japanese-medium teachers to encourage student-centred discussion and problem-solving owing to the planning focus on one language (Japanese) and a majority of students’ relatively low level of proficiency. In the English-medium classes, teachers were able to leverage Japanese and other home languages for English curriculum objectives and this required a student-centred approach. Ballinger, S., Lyster, R. Sterzuk, A. & Genesee, F. (2017). Context-appropriate crosslinguistic pedagogy: Considering the role of language status in immersion education. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 5(1), 30-57. García, O., & Li, W. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. McKenney, S. and Reeves, T.C. (2018). Conducting educational design research (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.
