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Good Practices of Multilingual and Minority Language Education

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Good Practices of Multilingual and Minority Language Education GOOD PRACTICES OF MULTILINGUAL AND MINORITY LANGUAGE MEDIUM EDUCATION ENG The Council of Europe is the continent’s leading human rights organisation. It comprises 47 member states, including all members of the European Union. All Council of Europe member states have signed up to the European Convention www.coe.int on Human Rights, a treaty designed to protect human rights, democracy and the rule of law. The European Court of Human Rights oversees the implementation of the Convention in the member states. GOOD PRACTICES OF MULTILINGUAL AND MINORITY LANGUAGE MEDIUM EDUCATION 2020 The Report was prepared within the framework of the Council of Europe project "Protecting national minorities, including Roma, and minority languages in Ukraine", which is implemented under the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine for 2018–2022. The views expressed in this Report are solely those of the authors based on the Terms of Reference they were engaged to undertake, and do not necessarily reflect the official positions of any Council of Europe department, agency or body. The original version of this Report is in English. Official translation is available in Ukrainian. In cases of variations, the English version should be considered authoritative. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be translated, reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic (CD-Rom, internet, etc.) or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the Directorate of Communication (F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex or [email protected]). Design & Layout: K.I.S. Ltd. Cover photo: Shutterstock Council of Europe Publishing F-67075 Strasbourg Cedex http://book.coe.int © Council of Europe, November 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 5 INTRODUCTION 6 MINORITY LANGUAGE MEDIUM EDUCATION: AN OVERVIEW 11 LANGUAGES AND MODELS 18 Slovak ......................................................................................18 Hungarian ..................................................................................37 Bulgarian ...................................................................................43 Polish ......................................................................................46 Romanian ..................................................................................58 Russian .....................................................................................62 German ....................................................................................68 Gaelic ......................................................................................73 Basque .....................................................................................79 TEACHER TRAINING, TEACHING MATERIALS, AWARENESS-RAISING 83 Teacher Training ............................................................................83 Teaching Materials ..........................................................................90 Awareness-raising ..........................................................................94 CONCLUSIONS 96 Table of Contents ►Page 3 Page 4 ► Good Practices of Multilingual and Minority Language Medium Education LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ACFC Advisory Committee on the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities CAHLR Ad hoc Committee of Experts on Regional or Minority Languages in Europe Committee of Experts Committee of Experts of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages EACEA Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency ECRML European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages FCNM Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities NC National Council (Serbia) NSG Nationality Self-Government (Hungary) RML(s) Regional or Minority Language(s) List of Abbreviations ►Page 5 INTRODUCTION This study presents a range of good practices of minority language medium education in selected countries. The publication is situated within the framework of the Council of Europe Action Plan for Ukraine 2018–2021, Project ‘Protecting national minorities, including Roma, and minority languag- es in Ukraine’. Its aim is to contribute to the ongoing discussion in Ukraine on minority language education. The focus of this study is on models of education in which a minority language is used as a medium of instruction, rather than as simply a subject in the curriculum; such education is often referred to as ‘bilingual’ education, as it generally also includes the use of an official language1 (where other lan- guages are also used as a medium of instruction, which happens in some cases, such forms of edu- cation are referred to as ‘multilingual education’).2 Both the European Charter for Regional or Minor- ity Languages (ECRML) (Art. 8) and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minor- ities (FCNM) (Art. 14) provide that both the use of a minority language as a medium of instruction and the teaching of a minority language simply as a subject in the curriculum are options for states which are parties to those treaties. However, in this study we focus on the use of minority languag- es as the medium or at least the partial medium of instruction. One important reason for this is that such forms of education tend to be much more effective in promoting fluency in the minority lan- guage than merely the teaching of the language as a subject, particularly for students with limit- ed abilities in the minority language when entering school.3 This is unsurprising, as there is a corre- lation between fluency in a language and the amount of time to which a person is exposed to the language, and minority language medium education ensures much greater levels of exposure to the minority language. Where children already speak the official language – and in many cases, children who are mem- bers of the minority often speak the official language and, as we shall see, often that language is the first language and perhaps the only language in which they are fluent – research has shown that minority language medium education not only promotes much more effective acquisition of the minority language, but also that such education does not adversely affected children’s abil- ities in the official language. There is, in fact some evidence to suggest that they may perform better in achievement in the official language than comparable cohorts in official language me- dium (‘mainstream’) education. Research also suggests that there are other benefits in minority language education for such students, including parental satisfaction with their children’s learn- ing and personal and social behaviour, and more positive attitudes among such children about themselves and their education.4 Minority language medium education also has a number of benefits for children who have the mi- nority language as their first language. First, such children maintain their first language much bet- ter than linguistic minority children who do not receive such education; thus – and as we shall dis- cuss further in the next section – such education is the most beneficial form in terms of linguistic and cultural maintenance, crucial policy goals of both the ECRML and the FCNM. Second, research suggests that minority children educated through their first language tend to perform as well in re- lation to the curriculum as a whole (in subjects such as mathematics, science, history and geogra- phy) as children in ‘mainstream’ education; indeed, some studies suggest that they perform better in such areas. This is obviously very important in terms of the overall life chances of such children 1 Or, where the minority language is an official language, a more widely-spoken official language. 2 Ofelia García (2009), Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective (Malder, MA: Wiley-Blackwell), p. 6. 3 Colin Baker and Wayne E. Wright (2017), Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 6thedition (Bristol: Multilingual Matters), pp. 257–258. 4 Ibid, pp. 258–260. Page 6 ► Good Practices of Multilingual and Minority Language Medium Education in the societies in which they live. Third, research suggests that when the home language is used in school, students’ sense of identity, self-esteem and self-concept are enhanced, whereas when such children are placed in ‘mainstream’ education, they are vulnerable to a loss of self-esteem and sta- tus, and their motivation and interest in schoolwork suffers, with adverse effects on performance. This clearly does not promote the life chances of such children. Finally, and perhaps most surpris- ingly, research has tended to show that children in minority language education tend to perform at least as well as children in mainstream education in their performance in the official language. The explanation seems to be that self-esteem is enhanced in minority language education, and that lan- guage and intellectual skills are better promoted by education in the first language, and that these skills appear to transfer easily into the official language. In any case, children with a minority lan- guage as a first language are usually exposed to the official language in both their immediate envi- ronment and through the media; furthermore, as we shall see, the various models of minority lan- guage education make significant provision for both the teaching of and instruction through the medium of the official language. Fluency in the official language is important in terms of enhanc- ing integration, which is also
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