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23 - Dual Language Education in the USA

from Part IV - Dual Language Learning, Immersion Programmes, and Learner Agency

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 December 2025

Piotr Romanowski
Affiliation:
University of Warsaw
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Summary

Despite the fact that bilingual instruction in the United States of America pre-dates its nationhood, educational policy has undulated its allowance and support for dual language education, marked by both selective preferential treatment of certain (primarily European) languages and through broad opposition to the endeavour as a whole. This brief review of the history and scholarship of dual language education in the USA recaps the ebbs and flows of bilingual education over time and the accompanying shifts in discourses about the purposes and benefits of bilingual education with subsequent implications for how bilingual education is implemented.

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