What do I lose if I lose my bilingual school? Students’ and teachers’ perceptions of the value of a Slovene language maintenance program in Italy

Abstract

The Italian–Slovenian border represents a dynamic vantage point from which to observe how cultural and linguistic contact takes place and how minority groups have created educational strategies to preserve their cultural and linguistic diversity while striving for respectful coexistence with the dominant society. Slovene-medium schools have been in existence since the 1800s, and, since 1961, they were recognized as K-13 Italian public schools devoted to the promotion of the cultural and linguistic heritage of the Slovene national minority and have successfully educated generations of ethnic Slovenes in both their mother tongue and the national language. This study unveils teachers’ and students’ language attitudes and ideologies that have permitted the language minority-based schools to persist and function as a viable alternative to the national mainstream schools. Framed by this sociolinguistic background, the study seeks to contribute to the debate on the benefits of bilingual education by examining teachers’ and students’ beliefs related to the role of mother-tongue education for (a) academic achievement in the minority and dominant language; and (b) minority language maintenance. These questions were explored in a Slovene-medium high school in Gorizia, Italy, in an attempt to contribute to the understanding of secondary language minority education as a context that is increasingly becoming a central focus of research, yet still merits much greater attention (Faltis and Wolfe 1999).