A Whole-School Primary Bilingual Programme

The chapter focuses on the use of Japanese language and the incorporation of heritage languages in a government primary bilingual Japanese programme. The weekly language distribution of the programme was 30 per cent of instruction in Japanese and 70 per cent in English. Just over 80 per cent of students at the school were LBOTE and approximately half of this number comprised students with a Japanese heritage. The aim is to show ways in which languages were used across the curriculum in the school, and to discuss this use in relation to the multilingual practices framework. Data on pedagogical choices, teacher reflections, teacher and student interviews, work samples, a student survey and classroom observations inform the discussion. The study is explained first and the findings are then discussed according to the dimensions of the framework: multilingual stance, student engagement with languages, institutional structures and pedagogies, and opportunities to learn (through) languages.