| The unique bilingualism or multilingualism formed in the ethnic groups in Xinjiang via long-term contact and exchange makes bilingual education possible in practice.Since 1955 when Xinjiang Uygur Municipality was set,the Chinese courses have been set in ethnic middle schools to begin the development of bilingual school education.Through 6decades of trial and errors in practice,the bilingual education in Xinjiang went through the journey from middle schools,elementary schools to universities and kindergartens,forming a complete bilingual education system in schools.However,the outcome was not obviously improved,being at low level.The new way to solve the practical problems of bilingual education in middle and elementary schools is to enhance the research on development journey of bilingual education in middle and elementary schools to reveal the law of bilingual education development based on the historical experience summarized.The major structural elements for bilingual education for middle and elementary schools include policy,teachers,courses,teaching materials,management and appraisal,whose status in bilingual education for middle and elementary schools is diverse from each other.The policy is the direction,teachers the core,courses the heart,teaching materials the carrier,management the means,and appraisal the guarantee.The six elements limit and influence each other to jointly push forward the bilingual education for middle and elementary schools.The development and evolution journey of bilingual education for middle and elementary schools in Xinjiang over a half century can be truly reproduced by sorting out and summing up the evolutionary process of the above six dimensions in the more than 60 years and analyzing the change of each dimension in each stage and the characteristics.With the perspective of historical science as breakthrough point,the research synthesizes literature method,comparative-historical method,questionnaire and interview method,etc.,and follows the technology path of "retrospect history"-"focus on actuality"-"face the future".In the light of historiographical thinking mode of integration of history and theory and learning from history,the research makes a profound analysis and study on the past,now and future of the six elements of policy,teachers,teaching materials,courses,management and appraisal for bilingual education for middle and elementary schools,with research content and related conclusions as follows:Firstly,the bilingual education policy serves as leader to command the development of the other five aspects of teachers,teaching materials,courses,management and appraisal and is responsible for dynamic and trend of bilingual education development.The production and development of policies are strongly supported by the state's policy about ethnic language and characters as well as ethnic education,and is also rooted in the actual demands of Xinjiang for multiple cultures development and ethnic education development in the local.The bilingual education policy for middle and elementary schools,which was established on education theory of integration of multiple elements,theory of multiple cultures education and theory of fair education,experienced three stages:Probing and formation keynoted on Chinese teaching,practice and development that target "a good knowledge of both ethnic language and Chinese",and reform and perfection oriented towards bilingual teaching.Secondly,the teachers of bilingual education are the core to influence the scale and effect of bilingual education development.The construction of bilingual teachers team for middle and elementary schools shows the development from dominance of the Han teachers to dominance of minority teachers.The state has introduced a train of favorable policy support,such as expanding total enrollment,special training plan for bilingual teachers in villages,free-charge bilingual normal university students for the minorities,support for training engineering of Xinjiang bilingual teachers,training engineering of bilingual teachers for middle and elementary schools of minorities,etc.,which remarkably developed the bilingual teachers team for middle and elementary schools in Xinjiang.However investigation revealed not a few dilemmas in absolute amounts of teachers,structure of teachers team,professional level,development will,pre-service training,post service training,etc.Thirdly,the teaching materials of bilingual education serve as the carrier and function as a bridge connecting the teachers and students.The development journey of bilingual education teaching materials for the past 60 years shows that:the main line is compilation and development of the teaching material Chinese Language in ethnic middle and elementary schools The compilation of Chinese Language under different guiding ideologies has different characteristics,and mainly went through three stages of exploration stage dominated by theory of grammar translation method,normalization stage dominated by Syllabus,and perfection stage dominated by Course Standard.Besides,the development course of bilingual education teaching materials also accumulated much experience that is worth promotion,such as taking syllabuses or course standard as basis,conforming to practical situation of development of minority students,exerting leadership of educational administration departments,placing a high premium on plurality and cooperation of compilers group,stressing development of supporting resources,etc.However,there existed drawbacks of ignoring compilation and development of Ethnic Language and science teaching materials.Fourthly,the bilingual education course is the heart,the pivot and support of bilingual education development.The bilingual education course of Xinjiang middle and elementary schools experienced transmutation from setting Chinese language course-school teaching in Chinese for part of science courses-school teaching in Chinese for all courses plus teaching of ethnic Chinese,and transited from one course to multiple courses then to all courses,also exhibits development characteristics of being staged,scientific,different,effective,etc.Guided by the purpose of "a good knowledge of both ethnic language and Chinese",and spurred by the government's strong advocating and participation,the bilingual education courses for middle and elementary schools formed variform and manifold course models that are specific to the local situation via diverse teaching experiments.Nevertheless,there are limits such as not definite enough bilingual courses setup,inadequate development of implicit bilingual courses,insufficient local course and school-based courses.Fifthly,the bilingual education management and appraisal are the external guarantee for development of teachers,courses,teaching materials and implementation and advancing of policies,so they can improve and guide the development of bilingual education in middle and elementary schools.The development journey of bilingual education management in middle and elementary schools is advancing gradually under leadership of educational administration department.According to different stresses of management work,it mainly went through 3 stages.The managerial experience such as all levels of government highly stressing,founding dedicated administrative agency,holding teaching experience exchange meeting,etc.,guaranteeing orderly development of bilingual education.Sixthly,the bilingual education appraisal experienced four development stages of stressing examination,being listed in university entrance examination subject,entering HSK level examination,stressing monitoring of bilingual teaching quality.Research found that the bilingual education appraisal for middle and elementary schools has problems of single main players,generally unified standard,not comprehensive enough content,outdatted methods,not open enough result.To really exert the appraisal's effect of improvement and service on bilingual education development entails to perfect and improve the appraisal ideas,appraisal players,appraisal method,appraisal indemnification system. |
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