Bilingual Education in Canada

Abstract

This chapter provides a broad overview of historical and contemporary key concepts in bilingual education while noting the ambiguous definitions and varying purposes and sometimes conflicting aims as driven by ideologies and politics. Major contributions and work in progress are considered through tradi- tional program models and efforts to extend bilingual education to varying student populations and global contexts. Problems associated with determining effectiveness are discussed, along with challenges to the traditional concepts of program models based on new scholarship challenging monolingual perspectives and encouraging multilingual understandings of bilingualism as dynamic class- room practices that do not insist on the strict separation of languages. We conclude with a discussion of future directions in bilingual education related to school, classroom, and student-level concepts.