Effective bilingual education in Francophone West Africa: Constraints and possibilities

Abstract

Bilingual education that incorporates a local language alongside the official language has become an increasingly common approach in sub-Saharan Africa for improving literacy rates and learning outcomes. Evidence suggests that bilingual instruction is largely associated with positive learning and literacy outcomes globally (Bühmann & Trudell, 2007; Takam & Fassé, 2020). However, the adoption of bilingual education does not guarantee positive learning outcomes (Ball et al., 2022). The quality of bilingual education programs may be constrained by various factors, including implementation challenges, such as inadequate teacher training and classroom resources, and socio-cultural challenges, such as negative perceptions of local languages in education. This paper reviews bilingual programs in sub-Saharan Africa, with a particular focus on programs in Francophone West African countries. We examine some factors that constrain and contribute to effective bilingual programs. We hope these insights on which factors contribute to high-quality bilingual education may help inform policy-makers and others seeking to improve bilingual education programs in these and other contexts.

Individual Differences in Leveraging Regularity in Emergent L2 Readers in Rural Côte d’Ivoire

“…Thus the amount of exposure to written materials that Ivorian children in a rural context receive is significantly lower than would be typical in WEIRD contexts. The quality of education for literacy is also significantly lower than in most WEIRD contexts in terms of infrastructure, teacher training and teaching materials (Ball et al, 2023;Cannanure et al, 2022) Children in rural CIV typically speak one or more of over sixty Ivorian languages as a first language, but are usually educated largely or solely in French, which for the majority is an L2 (Brou-Diallo, 2011;Jasińska & Guei, 2022), that they begin learning at school. Ivorian languages rarely appear in print, and French serves as the official national language and the prestige language for social, scholastic, and academic purposes.…”