Representation Bilingual students' expectations of the formal curriculum

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

1 Phd student of curriculum studies, Shahid Beheshti University , Tehran, Iran.

2 Associate Professor, Education Department, Shahid Beheshti, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

Introduction
The world of the 21st century is the world of production and advancement of science and knowledge, population growth, globalization, and so on. Globalization sees the world as a single place where local communities, especially individuals, are forced to accept their existence as part of a larger whole. One of the most important and serious issues related to the process of globalization is the issue of survival or continuity of identities. Experts believe that the process of globalization leads to the establishment and domination of a culture over the universe and indigenous cultures are forgotten; But the realized reality we are witnessing shows that the process of globalization does not mean the forgetting of indigenous, ethnic, linguistic and regional cultures; And even globalization has strengthened the emergence of frameworks of non-national collective identities, the most important of which are ethnic and linguistic identities.
Education, learning and upbringing in any cultured society are closely related and reciprocal. There are different approaches to culture, each approach offering specific patterns of education. Educational systems are based on a set of interactions between parents, teachers, students and community members. These interactions are influenced by many factors, including social and cultural factors such as language and linguistic values. Language is one of the most important variables that affects the learning process. The language through which we teach students plays a vital role in their cognitive, emotional, and moral development as students communicate, perform assignments, are evaluated, present, and read through language.
Language is part of one's identity and culture, and the local language should reinforce both through school. Local languages improve teaching and learning and have significant benefits for the community. Using the local language in the education system builds self-respect and pride in the local culture. By strengthening the importance of local languages, interest in local knowledge and culture is strengthened.
Today, many people around the world speak more than one language, which is due to the various cultural and social issues and needs of today's society. Most nations of the world are multilingual. In fact, it is difficult to find a nation that is monolingual. In bilingual areas, the curriculum presented to students in the form of learning assignments is meaningful to the teacher, while in some cases it is not comprehensible to bilingual students, causing the flow of feedback to become one-way and the learning-learning process to be effective. Lose yourself. Students who do not speak their native language face many oppositions, ideologies, and stereotypes. They are confronted with changing realities in their communities that are only partial, as well as pervasive messages on television, news, and online media. These students are in a constant state of transition. They are constantly on the move, constantly interacting with different (sometimes competing) cultures and languages. Therefore, the main question in this research is:
What do bilingual students expect from the official school curriculum?
Sub-questions:
• What are the goals of bilingual students expecting to learn from the formal school curriculum?
• What content do bilingual students expect to learn from the formal school curriculum?
• What methods do bilingual students expect to receive from the formal school curriculum?
• What kind of assessment do bilingual students expect from the formal school curriculum?
Methods
The present research has been done in the paradigm of interpretiveness in a qualitative way and with a phenomenological method. The study population included all bilingual students of Saravan city who were studying in the 2019-2020 academic year. Purpose-based sampling was used to select the studied samples. The sample size in this study was determined using the data saturation criterion, which means that the selection of samples continued until the researcher did not receive new data and the data was saturated. Finally, 18 bilingual students participated in this study.
Findings
1. Objectives
• Applying education in the mother tongue in the early years of elementary school
• Simultaneous use of mother tongue and formal education in school
• Teaching an official language before entering school
• Teaching other languages (Arabic and English) in the curriculum
2. Content
• Design of ethnic-linguistic content in official content
• Combining formal and ethnic content in the curriculum
• Inclusion of customs and ethnic-linguistic culture in the official content
• Emphasis on the overlap of ethnic-linguistic and official content;
• Existence of valuable ethnic-linguistic content
• Development of official regional content
• Interaction between formal and ethnic-linguistic content in the curriculum
3. Teaching methods and strategies
• Teacher using different methods
• Applying a participatory and collaborative approach
• Simultaneous use of official and mother tongue
• Use of mother tongue in the early years of school
• Refer students to mother tongue stories
• Refer students to personal experiences
• Fair treatment and avoidance of teacher discrimination against bilingual students
• Avoid making fun of bilingual students by the teacher
• Respect for bilingual students
4. Evaluation
• Evaluate circuit performance
• Paying attention to the inability of exams and scoring in measuring students' learning
• Accuracy of quantitative tests
• Use of oral evaluation
• Incomplete and inaccurate descriptive evaluation
• Use portfolio in learning
• Pay attention to daily and monthly evaluation
Discussion
Seeing schools that have many things in common, such as the number of students, educational resources and facilities, and the economic status of students, but are very different in terms of student learning and academic achievement, makes us think that the reason What could this be? Bilingualism is always one of the issues that affect the process of education and learning of people in their community and is a phenomenon that occurs in all parts of the world. This study was conducted to identify the expectations of bilingual students from the formal curriculum and it can be claimed that this study has shown the most important expectations of bilingual students from the formal curriculum. The results showed that bilingual students believe that the main mission of the educational system is to develop a curriculum that responds to the cultural and linguistic characteristics of bilingual students because neglecting the culture and language of the minority creates many educational problems and social challenges.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

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