Objects, Characteristics, Content, and Methods of Research in Ethnic Minority Bilingual Education in China

Abstract

Bilingual educational research is a comprehensive, cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and borderline disciplinary domain that studies the phenomena and regularities of bilingual and bicultural education (including those of multilingual and multicultural education). As well as being a branch discipline of ethnic pedagogy, it is at the same time a branch discipline of ethnic linguistics. Since the 1950s and in the wake of the deepening and popularization of research into bilingualism and biculruralism on the international scene, research has rapidly advanced into the theory and practice of bilingual education. All multinational countries in the world and a number of international organizations have successively set up bilingual educational research institutions, initiated research into bilingual education, and published large numbers of academic treatises and books, results of experiments, and investigative reports. Worth mentioning is that the world-renowned Canadian scholar, Professor W. F. Mackey, and Professor Migual Siguán of Spain accepted a research project on "bilingualism and education" from the International Bureau of Education (IBE), the final result of which was a book entitled Education and Bilingualism. This achievement marked the fact that bilingual education had initially become an independent discipline. Although this research was not all-inclusive, it delineated at least a rough framework for disciplinary research into bilingual education and laid a preliminary foundation for the development of future research in bilingualism. Its main content included bilingual individuals, bilingual societies, bilingual education, the psycho-sociological basis of bilingual education, organization and implementation of bilingual education, and assessment of research into, and results of, bilingual education.1 In this project, the authors gathered and studied facts related to bilingual education in some of the main multiethnic and multilingual countries and regions, as well as the circumstances of research into such education. However, they did not touch on bilingual education or bilingual educational research in China. Thus, by developing research into the bilingual education conducted among China's ethnic minorities, we will not only be promoting the smooth advance of the practice of China's bilingual education and realize mutual linguistic communication, political equality, common cultural prosperity, common economic development, and, ultimately, the great unity of all China's ethnic peoples, we will certainly enrich the world's treasury of bilingual educational research and make China's due contribution toward promoting the development and practice of international bilingual education.