| Bilingual education probably is one of the most contentious issues in our nation's public school and the use of the English language learners' primary language for instruction has been the core of the controversy. The purpose of this study is: (1) to provide information on Chinese American school personnel's perceptions toward bilingual education and their perceptions about the role of Chinese language in educating Chinese American English language learners; (2) to provide a Chinese American perspective that will help policy makers to design a sound education policy for Chinese American English language learners specifically and other linguistic minority students in general.;The research methodology for this study was both quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative methodology included descriptive and inferential statistics to analyze a survey of 65 items with 186 respondents and a factor analysis of the 30 items on bilingual educational issues in the survey. The qualitative methodology included a content analysis of the structured interview of 13 questions to 15 Chinese American school personnel. School personnel, in this study, refer to administrators, teachers and paraprofessionals in bilingual education programs within the California K--12 public school system.;Six research questions and ten hypotheses guided the study. The findings from the research questions suggested that cultural background, linguistic background, societal contexts and education conditions all need to be considered in order to establish a sound bilingual education policy. Due to these factors, even though many Chinese American school personnel acknowledged that the two-way bilingual education model is ideal, a majority of them expressed that at present, the transitional type of bilingual education is more realistic for Chinese American English language learners.;Furthermore, birth place and language ability seemed to affect respondents' perceptions of bilingual education based on results from the hypotheses. Foreign born and Chinese dominant Chinese Americans tended to support maintenance bilingual education more than the American born. Chinese/English balanced bilinguals seemed to support and understand the benefits of linguistic transference the best. |
