Cover not available
Part of
Understanding Language and Cognition through Bilingualism: In honor of Ellen Bialystok
Edited by Gigi Luk, John A.E. Anderson and John G. Grundy
[Studies in Bilingualism 64] 2023
► pp. 188–208

Chapter 9
Learning through bilingual education

Cognitive and academic impacts

| Clark University
| Clark University

In this chapter, we outline the contributions of Ellen Bialystok to our understanding of the effects of bilingualism on cognition and how these contributions have inspired research on bilingual education. We discuss how her work on cognitive impacts of bilingualism and bilingual education have contributed to and fueled research investigating academic achievement and learning across languages for both majority-language speakers learning a target language and minority-language speakers learning the majority-language. We conclude with the next steps and new questions that have arisen in this area of research and the implications for education.

Article outline
  • Bialystok’s contribution to the understanding of language and cognition
  • Bialystok and bilingual education
  • Bilingual education and academic achievement
  • Learning academic content across languages
  • Next steps and final thoughts
  • References
Published online: 6 June 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.64.09esp
References
Ballinger, S., Lyster, R., Sterzuk, A., & Genesee, F.
(2017) Context-appropriate crosslinguistic pedagogy. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 5(1), 30–57. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barac, R., & Bialystok, E.
(2012) Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: Role of language, cultural background, and education. Child Development, 83(2), 413–422. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E.
(2001) Metalinguistic aspects of bilingual processing. Annual review of applied linguistics, 21, 169-181. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2009) Bilingualism: The good, the bad, and the indifferent. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(1), 3–11. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2018) Bilingual education for young children: Review of the effects and consequences. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 21(6), 666–679. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., & Barac, R.
(2012) Emerging bilingualism: Dissociating advantages for metalinguistic awareness and executive control. Cognition, 122(1), 67–73. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I. M., & Luk, G.
(2008) Lexical access in bilinguals: Effects of vocabulary size and executive control. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 21(6), 522–538. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., & Feng, X.
(2009) Language proficiency and executive control in proactive interference: Evidence from monolingual and bilingual children and adults. Brain and Language, 109(2–3), 93–100. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., Luk, G., Peets, K. F., & Yang, S.
(2010) Receptive vocabulary differences in monolingual and bilingual children. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 13(4), 525–531. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bialystok, E., Peets, K. F., & Moreno, S.
(2014) Producing bilinguals through immersion education: Development of metalinguistic awareness. Applied Psycholinguistics, 35(1), 177–191. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bournot-Trites, M., & Reeder, K.
(2001) Interdependence revisited: Mathematics achievement in an intensified French immersion program. Canadian Modern Language Review, 58(1), 27–43. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Broca, Á.
(2016) CLIL and non-CLIL: Differences from the outset. Elt Journal, 70(3), 320–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carlson, S. M., & Meltzoff, A. N.
(2008) Bilingual experience and executive functioning in young children. Developmental Science, 11(2), 282–298. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clarkson, P. C.
(2006) Multicultural classrooms: Contexts for much mathematics teaching and learning. In F. Favilli (Eds.), Ethnomathematics and mathematics education (pp. 9–16). Tipografia Editrice Pisana.Google Scholar
Costa, A., Miozzo, M., & Caramazza, A.
(1999) Lexical selection in bilinguals: Do words in the bilingual’s two lexicons compete for selection? Journal of Memory and Language, 41(3), 365–397. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cummins, J.
(1981) The role of primary language development in promoting educational success for language minority students. In California State Department of Education (Eds.), Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework (pp. 3–49). Evaluation, Dissemination and Assessment Center California State University.Google Scholar
(2000) Language, power and pedagogy: Bilingual children in the crossfire. Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cummins, J., & Swain, M.
(1986) Bilingualism in Education (pp. 80–95). Routledge.Google Scholar
De Cat, C., Gusnanto, A., & Serratrice, L.
(2018) Identifying a threshold for the executive function advantage in bilingual children. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 40(1), 119–151. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
De Graaff, R., & van Wilgenburg, O.
(2015) Quality control as a driving force in bilingual education. In F. Genesee (Ed.), Building bilingual education systems: Forces, mechanisms and counterweights (pp.167–179). Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Diamond, A.
(2013) Executive functions. Annual Review of Psychology, 64, 135–168. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Esposito, A. G.
(2020) Executive functions in two-way dual-language education: A mechanism for academic performance. Bilingual Research Journal, 43(4), 417–432. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Esposito, A. G., & Baker-Ward, L.
(2013) Dual-language education for low-income children: Preliminary evidence of benefits for executive function. Bilingual Research Journal, 36(3), 295–310. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Esposito, A. G., & Bauer, P. J.
(2019) Self-derivation through memory integration under low surface similarity conditions: The case of multiple languages. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 187, 104661. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Esposito, A. G., Sirkin, R. E., & Bauer, P. J.
(2017) Bilingual education. In M. H. Bornstein (Ed.), The Sage encyclopedia of lifespan human development. Sage.Google Scholar
García, O.
(2009) Education, multilingualism and translanguaging in the 21st century. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas, R. Phillipson, A. K. Mohanty, M. Panda (Eds.), Social justice through multilingual education (pp. 140–158). Multilingual Matters. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García, O., & Woodley, H. H.
(2015) Bilingual education. In M. Bigelow & J. Ennser-Kananen (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of educational linguistics (pp. 132–144). Routledge.Google Scholar
Genesee, F.
(1987) Learning through two languages: Studies of immersion and bilingual education. Newbury House.Google Scholar
Genesee, F., Geva, E., Dressler, C., & Kamil, M.
(2006) Synthesis: Cross-linguistic relationships. In D. August & T. Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language-Minority Children and Youth (pp. 153–174). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Gentner, D.
(1977) Children’s performance on a spatial analogies task. Child Development, 48, 1034–1039. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(1988) Metaphor as structure mapping: The relational shift. Child Development, 59, 47–59. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gentner, D., & Toupin, C.
(1986) Systematicity and surface similarity in the development of analogy. Cognitive Science, 10(3), 277–300. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J.
(1983) Schema induction and analogical transfer. Cognitive Psychology, 15(1), 1–38. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gollan, T. H., Montoya, R. I., Fennema-Notestine, C., & Morris, S. K.
(2005) Bilingualism affects picture naming but not picture classification. Memory & Cognition, 33(7), 1220–1234. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grant, H. M., Bredahl, L. C., Clay, J., Ferrie, J., Groves, J. E., McDorman, T. A., & Dark, V. J.
(1998) Context-dependent memory for meaningful material: information for students. Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 12(6), 617–623. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Green, D. W., & Abutalebi, J.
(2013) Language control in bilinguals: The adaptive control hypothesis. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 25(5), 515–530. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Greene, J. P.
(1998) A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of bilingual education. Tomas Rivera Policy Institute.Google Scholar
Hill, S. R.
(2018) A meta-analysis of the effect of ten language immersion programs on academic achievement. Spanish and Portuguese Review, 4(Fall), 23–50.Google Scholar
Howard, E. R., Elizabeth, R. L., Sugarman, J., Christian, D., Lindholm-Leary, K. J., & Rogers, D.
(2007) Guiding principles for dual language education. Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Howard, E. R., Lindholm-Leary, K. J., Rogers, D., Olague, N., Medina, J., Kennedy, B., Sugarman, J., & Christian, D.
(2018) Guiding principles for dual language education (3rd ed.). Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Huebner, T.
(2019) Language policy and bilingual education in Thailand: Reconciling the past, anticipating the future. LEARN Journal: Language Education and Acquisition Research Network, 12(1), 19–29.Google Scholar
Janus, M., Lee, Y., Moreno, S., & Bialystok, E.
(2016) Effects of short-term music and second-language training on executive control. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 144, 84–97. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jones, W. R., & Stewart, W. A. C.
(1951) Bilingualism and verbal intelligence. British Journal of Statistical Psychology, 4(1), 3–8. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kałamała, P., Szewczyk, J., Chuderski, A., Senderecka, M., & Wodniecka, Z.
(2020) Patterns of bilingual language use and response inhibition: A test of the adaptive control hypothesis. Cognition, 204, 104373. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kaushanskaya, M., Gross, M., & Buac, M.
(2014) Effects of classroom bilingualism on task-shifting, verbal memory, and word learning in children. Developmental Science, 17(4), 564–583. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kieffer, M. J., Lesaux, N. K., Rivera, M., & Francis, D. J.
(2009) Accommodations for english language learners taking large-scale assessments: A meta-analysis on effectiveness and validity. Review of Educational Research, 79(3), 1168–1201. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kotovsky, L., & Gentner, D.
(1996) Comparison and categorization in the development of relational similarity. Child Development, 67(6), 2797–2822. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kroll, J., Gerfen, C., Guo, T., & Misra, M.
(2008) Cross-language competition begins during speech planning but extends into bilingual speech. International Journal of Psychology, 43(3–4).Google Scholar
Lindholm-Leary, K. J.
(2005) Review of research and best practices on effective features of dual language education programs. Center for Applied Linguistics.Google Scholar
Marian, V., & Neisser, U.
(2000) Language-dependent recall of autobiographical memories. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 129(3), 361. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marian, V., Shook, A., & Schroeder, S. R.
(2013) Bilingual two-way immersion programs benefit academic achievement. Bilingual Research Journal, 36(2), 167–186. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Matsumoto, A., & Stanny, C.
(2006) Language-dependent access to autobiographical memory in Japanese-English bilinguals and US monolinguals. Memory, 14(3), 378–390. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mehisto, P., & Genesee, F.
(2015) Building bilingual education systems. Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Michael, E. B., & Gollan, T. H.
(2005) Being and becoming bilingual: Individual differences and consequences for language production. In J. F. Kroll & A. M. B. de Groot (Eds.) Handbook of bilingualism: Psycholinguistic approaches (pp. 497–515). Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mix, K. S.
(1999) Similarity and numerical equivalence: Appearances count. Cognitive Development, 14(2), 269–297. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moreno, S., Bialystok, E., Wodniecka, Z., & Alain, C.
(2010) Conflict resolution in sentence processing by bilinguals. Journal of Neurolinguistics, 23(6), 564–579. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
New American Economy
(2017) Not lost in translation: The growing importance of foreign language skills in the US job market. Retrieved on 8 December 2022 from [URL]
Nicolay, A.-C., & Poncelet, M.
(2013) Cognitive abilities underlying second-language vocabulary acquisition in an early second-language immersion education context: A longitudinal study. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 115(4), 655–671. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nicolay, A. C., & Poncelet, M.
(2015) Cognitive benefits in children enrolled in an early bilingual immersion school: A follow up study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18(4), 789–795. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Palmer, D. K., Cervantes-Soon, C., Dorner, L., & Heiman, D.
(2019) Bilingualism, biliteracy, biculturalism, and critical consciousness for all: Proposing a fourth fundamental goal for two-way dual language education. Theory Into Practice, 58(2), 121–133. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Park, S. , Dotan, P. L., & Esposito, A. G.
(2022) Do executive functions gained through two-way dual-Language education translate into math achievement?. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 1-15.Google Scholar
Peal, E., & Lambert, W. E.
(1962) The relation of bilingualism to intelligence. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 76(27), 1–23. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poarch, G. J., & van Hell, J. G.
(2012) Executive functions and inhibitory control in multilingual children: Evidence from second-language learners, bilinguals, and trilinguals. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 113(4), 535–551. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Polat, N., Zarecky-Hodge, A., & Schreiber, J. B.
(2016) Academic growth trajectories of ELLs in NAEP data: The case of fourth- and eighth-grade ELLs and non-ELLs on mathematics and reading tests. Journal of Educational Research, 109(5), 541–553. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Poza, L. E.
(2016) “Puro spelling and grammar”: Conceptualizations of language and the marginalization of emergent bilinguals. Penn GSE Perspectives on Urban Education, 13(1), 20–41.Google Scholar
Purić, D., Vuksanović, J., & Chondrogianni, V.
(2017) Cognitive advantages of immersion education after 1 year: Effects of amount of exposure. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 159, 296–309. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rolstad, K., Mahoney, K., & Glass, G. V.
(2008) The big picture in bilingual education: A meta-analysis corrected for Gersten’s coding error. Journal of Educational Research & Policy Studies, 8(2), 1–15.Google Scholar
Saer, D. J.
(1923) The effect of bilingualism on intelligence. British Journal of Psychology: General Section, 14, 25–38.Google Scholar
Schrauf, R. W.
(2000) Bilingual autobiographical memory: Experimental studies and clinical cases. Culture & Psychology, 6(4), 387–417. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sheng, L., Bedore, L. M., Peña, E. D., & Fiestas, C.
(2013) Semantic development in Spanish–English bilingual children: Effects of age and language experience. Child Development, 84(3), 1034–1045. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sieben, I., & van Ginderen, N.
(2014) De keuze voor tweetalig onderwijs. Mens En Maatschappij, 89(3), 233–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, S. M., & Vela, E.
(2001) Environmental context-dependent memory: A review and meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 8(2), 203–220. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Sotoca Sienes, E., & Muñoz Hueso, A. C.
(2015) The impact of bilingual education on academic achievement of studetns enrolled in public schools in the autonomous community of Madrid. Journal of Education Research, 9(1), 27–41.Google Scholar
Spelke, E. S., & Tsivkin, S.
(2001) Language and number: A bilingual training study. Cognition, 78(1), 45–88. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Steele, J. L., Slater, R. O., Zamarro, G., Miller, T., Li, J., Burkhauser, S., & Bacon, M.
(2017) Effects of dual-language immersion programs on student achievement: Evidence from lottery data. American Educational Research Journal, 54(1S), 282S–306S. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Swain, M., & Lapkin, S.
(1982) Evaluating bilingual education: A Canadian case study. Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Tulving, E., & Thomson, D. M.
(1973) Encoding specificity and retrieval processes in episodic memory. Psychological Review, 80(5), 352–373. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Valian, V.
(2015) Bilingualism and cognition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 18(1), 3–24. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Verspoor, M., de Bot, K., & Xu, X.
(2015) The effects of English bilingual education in the Netherlands. Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education, 3(1), 4–27. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Winner, E., Rosenstiel, A. K., & Gardner, H.
(1976) The development of metaphoric understanding. Developmental Psychology, 12(4), 289–297. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Yang, H., Hartanto, A., & Yang, S.
(2016) The importance of bilingual experience in assessing bilingual advantages in executive functions. Cortex, 75, 237–240. DOI logoGoogle Scholar