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Bilingual Education in Brazil

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Policy Development in TESOL and Multilingualism

Abstract

Brazil does not currently have an approved education policy for Portuguese-English bilingual programs, which is problematic in terms of considering the discourse of bilingual education in the country today. We start the chapter with an overview of current laws and guidelines for bilingual programs for other languages, namely Brazilian sign language, border schools, and indigenous schools. We then review some education laws related to the teaching of foreign languages. We present information about typical bilingual education program models to show the affordances and focus of each model. The main section of the chapter includes a discussion of new guidelines for bilingual education in Brazil which are currently being reviewed. Based on current bilingual education practices that are additive and focus on multilingualism, we propose some principles of plurilingual pedagogies for bilingual education programs in Brazil, since an absence of policies leaves the country with little information about how to structure these programs.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA, USA

    Luciana C. de Oliveira

  2. Universidade Federal de São Carlos (Federal University of São Carlos), São Carlos, Brazil

    Camila Höfling

Authors
  1. Luciana C. de Oliveira
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  2. Camila Höfling
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Correspondence to Luciana C. de Oliveira .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of English, Foundation Program, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    Kashif Raza

  2. Dubai Men’s College, Higher Colleges of Technology, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

    Christine Coombe

  3. Carnegie Mellon University Qatar, Doha, Qatar

    Dudley Reynolds

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de Oliveira, L.C., Höfling, C. (2021). Bilingual Education in Brazil. In: Raza, K., Coombe, C., Reynolds, D. (eds) Policy Development in TESOL and Multilingualism. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3603-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-3603-5_3

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  • Online ISBN: 978-981-16-3603-5

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