Multilingual education in Germany: discourses, practices and experiences in two-way immersion

Budach, Gabriele (2009) Multilingual education in Germany: discourses, practices and experiences in two-way immersion. In, Torres-Guzmán, Maria E. and Gomez, Joel (eds.) Global Perspectives on Multilingualism: Unity in Diversity. New York, USA. Teachers College Press, pp. 169-199.

Record type: Book Section

Abstract

This chapter focuses on multilingualism and language education from a German perspective. In particular, it looks at two-way bilingual immersion (dual-language education) and explores some of the ways in which this fairly new model plays out as an approach to developing multilingualism. I examine three aspects: (1) the German sociolinguistic context in which multilingualism is debated as a goal of schooling and as a social reality; (2) the story of one particular bilingual project that portrays the competing interests and conditions for implementing multilingual education; and (3) some preliminary results from an ethnographic study that illustrate the impact of bilingual education on social identification and ways of learning. Within the framework of a community of practice, the findings suggest that two-way immersion creates a set of specific practices in which the majority and the minority languages are equally valued. These practices allow for identities and ways of learning that integrate the diversity of linguistic resources and potentially challenge dominant views of language hierarchies in the society.

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