Part 2: Research-based answers to questions about mother tongue-based bilingual or multilingual education 8
Introduction
This part of the booklet for policy makers presents research relating to MTB MLE programmes in several parts of the world. The purpose is to answer questions that you as policy makers might ask as you are planning for MTB MLE in your country.
Several issues relating to MTB MLE research are worth noting at this point:
1. Most of the MTB MLE research in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Pacific is quite recent. MTB MLE programmes have been established for many decades but there is little information about the educational outcomes of those programmes because student assessment results are not available.
2. Many communities with MTB MLE programmes lack funding so they cannot afford to support a large number of schools. Even when programme leaders provide careful documentation, the number of students included in the research is small— sometimes very small.
3. The most extensive research on MTB MLE has been completed in the USA and Canada but research evidence from these countries is often less convincing to policy makers in other parts of the world.
8 This part of the policy maker’ s booklet was written by Stephen Walter, PhD., Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics, Dallas Texas, USA
Booklet for Policy Makers
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