Factors, processes and outcomes of early immersion education in the Francophone Community in Belgium

Abstract

Although Belgium is characterized by a widespread consensus that a functional proficiency in the two major national languages, Dutch and French, as well as in English is desirable, educational provision to achieve such proficiency has long been constrained by an official language policy which mandates that education must be monolingual in Dutch, French or German. The last two decades, however, have witnessed an increased interest in bilingual education. In 1998, a legal framework was created for immersion education in the francophone part of the country, allowing for the use of Dutch, English or German as a medium of instruction from the age of five onwards. After an outline of the legal socio-political background, against which immersion education in Belgium is implemented, this paper describes structural and organizational features of early immersion education in the Francophone Community (FC), discusses pedagogical practices and reviews academic and linguistic outcomes. In addition, a study of the L2 development in one early English immersion school is presented. Results are compared to the L2 proficiency levels obtained in immersion preschools in Germany and Sweden. Outcomes are discussed in terms of the programme characteristics and of the challenges facing early immersion education in the FC.

Keywords:

• early immersion education
• Belgium
• Francophone Community
• vocabulary and grammar development
• L2 outcomes

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the efforts by fellow team members of the Early Language and Intercultural Acquisition Studies (ELIAS) project in the collection and processing of L2 data from the Swedish and German preschools. We also thank the reviewers and editors for their valuable feedback on the first version of this paper. This work was made possible by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO), where Aafke Buyl is a PhD fellow.

Notes

1. Private schools and international schools are not subject to the 1963 language laws and may provide bilingual education (e.g. the European Schools; cf. Housen 2002).

2. Although aimed at producing bilinguals, the ‘transmutation’ programme de facto strengthened the Frenchification process in Brussels (Van de Craen 2002), which became the ‘major reason for rejection of bilingualism in education in Belgium’ (Sherman Swing 1988, p. 72). The transmutation programme was stopped in 1915 but was not officially abolished until 1963 (Bollen and Baten 2010).

3. Preschool and primary school in the FC form one educational phase consisting of two stages (étapes), each of which in turn consists of two cycles. Preschool Year 3, primary Year 1 and primary Year 2 together form the second cycle of the first stage. Each cycle is concluded by the summative evaluation of a set of target competences (see the section on Assessment).

4. For more information, see the website of the Ministry of Education of the FC (www.enseignement.be).

5. The authors of the paper were members of the ELIAS team and actively contributed in collecting, processing and reporting on the data. The Belgian data (FC) were collected by the present authors. Results are reported with the permission of the fellow ELIAS team members.

6. The academic year starts in September and ends in June. So they were first tested after just over 6 months in the immersion programme (preschool; February–March) and a second time exactly one year later (primary 1; again in March).

7. The subgroup that was tested twice and compared with the Swedish/German data consisted of 14 pupils. The ‘LONGITUDINAL’ subgroup referred to here which was tested 3 times consisted of 13 participants (the same 14 minus one that dropped out).

8. Exception is the significant GT gain score difference between the FC school and Germany₁.