Models of bilingual education in majority language contexts: an exploratory study of bilingual programmes in qatari primary schools

Many regions in the Middle East are currently implementing bilingual-type programmes in their national education. The abundance of initiatives in the region (e.g. Qatar, UAE, and Bahrain) suggest that this represents more than just a quantitative increase of second language provision in schools. This marks a shift from bilingual education being for the elite only towards encapsulating forms of bilingual education within public education. However, with the lack of formal documents and super-national language policies formulated to state the goals, policies and guidance for language education in the states (such as The European Commission's White Paper on Education and Training, 1995, or the Plurilingualism Promotion Plan issued by the Andalusian government in 2005) presents a caveat increased by the scarcity of research to surround these bilingual practices before and after the national changes in education and the language-in-education issues. Documenting this change is informative for the educational sec...