A cross‐national comparison of sociolinguistic contexts for bilingual education

Abstract

Peru and the United States provide two radically different settings for bilingual education, yet the sociolinguistic contexts within which programmes for minority groups function offer some interesting parallels. Two specific cases (Puno and Texas) are described, then a comparison is made of their respective contextual features. Despite surface similarities, a close examination of the philosophical orientation behind the two programmes reveals an important difference in terms of the extent to which it is understood that educational programmes should reflect broad community goals, as opposed to being concerned only with the fostering of improved achievement outcomes for individual students from the target group.