ABSTRACT
Although bilingualism is not a new phenomenon, the way it has been perceived by society has been variable over time. Bilingual education was seen as desirable for hundreds of years, up until the 15th century, when the changing socio-economic perspective and the development of the printing press prompted the drive to uniform the language used and make education homogenous. This trend has prevailed until the 20th century, when leaders have realized the need to educate everyone in society. This has given rise to decades of experimenting with bilingual education. However, the overarching aim remained the same: to educate all children but with the hope of them mastering the ‘target’ language of the school and then facilitating essentially monolingual education. Other programmes, which aimed at gaining proficiency in both languages, kept them strictly separate, dedicating private lessons, teachers, or even days of the week to one language or the other. This chapter follows the evolution of bilingual education practices to date. It will first provide a historical overview of different approaches to bilingual education, including the appropriate research and key findings. It will then discuss the pedagogical methods used, and, finally, the future steps and directions in bilingual education.
