Fortunately, the number of research studies relating to MTB MLE is increasing. This section presents information from studies of programmes in five countries— Cameroon, Guatemala, the Philippines, Viet Nam and Thailand. 9 The information presented here aims to provide answers to the following questions:
•• Does MTB MLE help students learn the official school language?
•• Does it help students achieve grade-level competencies in other academic subjects?
•• Does it prepare students for secondary schooling?
••
Does it help girls achieve academic success in primary school?
Q1
Does MTB MLE help students learn the official school language?
Three studies, from the Philippines, Thailand and Cameroon, help to answer this question. The studies examine the results of student assessments in two kinds of schools in each country.( Note that in each country, students in both kinds of schools use the same MT at home)
••
MTB MLE( or simply“ MLE”) schools in one language area that use the students’ MT plus the official school language 10
•• Non-MLE schools in the same language area that use only the official school language
MTB MLE RESOURCE KIT Including the Excluded: Promoting Multilingual Education
Over a period of up to six years, researchers assessed students’ progress in both kinds of schools and in more than twenty different field settings to compare students from MLE and non-MLE schools. 11 Each year they assessed all the students using tests that were based on governmentapproved curriculum. All the tests included at least one section that evaluated students’ proficiency in the official school language.
The results in Figure 1( p. 29) show students’ progress in learning the official school language. Note that
9 The author limited this report to these five programmes because( 1) he had personal knowledge of how the data were collected or( 2) he had done previous work on the data so knew how it could be used to answer the four questions that guide this report. Other information exists but is not publicly available or there is insufficient information about how testing was done and data analyzed.
10 See Part 1 of this booklet for more about teaching the MT as a subject and using it for instruction in MTB MLE schools.
11 One study from Grade 4 in the Patani Malay programme in Thailand is not included in Figure 1. That study compared Grade 4 students in their ability to use standard Thai. Since the results for Grade 4 students in both MTB and non-MTB MLE schools were significantly different than their results in Grade 3 and Grade 5, the team set aside the grade 4 result as being non-typical.
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