Literature Review Parameters

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Literature Review Parameters

A great deal of research on bilingual education has already been done in Inuit communities and around the world. By reading the prior research, we can learn what others have found works well or does not work well in bilingual education. Our reading of past research identifies six pillars of effective bilingual education.

Sources that we considered in coming up with these pillars include:
• Scholarly frameworks of bilingual education. These include, for example, Jim Cummins’ (2000) four organizational principles for empowering education; Nancy Hornberger’s (2009) ten certainties in bilingual education; and May, Hill, and Tiakiwai’s (2004) indicators of good practice in bilingual/immersion education.
• Inuit-driven research and analyses of promising and desired practices in Inuktitut or bilingual education. These include, for example, Nunavut’s Education Act (2008); the National Committee on Inuit Education [NCIE]’s national strategy (2011); and Avataq Cultural Institute’s Ilirijavut – That which we treasure report (2012).
• Case studies of bilingual education in Inuit and other relevant contexts.
• Syntheses of theories and practices in bilingual education (e.g., Wright, Boun, and Garcia’s 2015 Handbook of Bilingual and Multicultural Education)

Dialogue between members of the Akuttujuuk Inuit Educators Research Network and the Network’s academic support team also helped interpret and contextualize findings from the literature review within Inuit experiences.

A complete list of the sources we considered is available here.

References cited

Avataq Cultural Institute. (2012). Illirijavut – That which we treasure – La langue que nous chérissons. Inukjuaq, QC: Author.

Cummins, J. (2000). Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.

Hornberger, N. H. (2009). Multilingual education policy and practice: Ten certainties (grounded in Indigenous experience). Language Teaching, 42(2), 197–211.

May, S., Hill, R., & Tiakiwai, S. (2004). Bilingual/immersion education: Indicators of good practice. Final report to the Ministry of Education. Wellington, N.Z.: Ministry of Education.

National Committee on Inuit Education. (2011). First Canadians, Canadians first. National strategy on Inuit education. Ottawa, ON: Amaujaq National Centre for Inuit Education.

Wright, W. E., Boun, S., & Garcia, O. (Eds.). (2015). The Handbook of Bilingual and Multilingual Education. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.