Development of Hebrew/English biliteracy in a Jewish day school: Issues of language and identity. In language maintenance, revival and shift in the sociology of religion

Abstract

Research continues to document the success of bilingual education for learners, not only academically (Krashen & McField, 2005) but also in their cognitive and social growth (Bialystok et al., 2012; Eisenstein Ebsworth, 2009; Toppleberg & Collins, 2010). The case study presented here focuses on developing bilingualism and biliteracy in Hebrew and English in the B’nai Moshe Jewish Day School (pseudonym) in the Northeastern United States, where Hebrew is viewed as an important heritage language for the worldwide Jewish community (Schers, 1999). One of the greatest chal-lenges in supporting second-language acquisition for Jewish learners in the US is finding ways to facilitate the development of their Hebrew and English proficiency within a bilingual educational experience (Alexander, 1999). As Hornberger (2003) has suggested, the existence of alternative bilingual educational models and programs can make it difficult to tease apart which aspects of the experience are meaningful to particular learn-ers and communities. By providing an in-depth look at a single school, we can specifically characterize the elements of the bilingual program offered and associate it with processes and outcomes. (from Introduction)