Elementary School Teachers’ Perceptions on Bilingualism of School-age Multicultural Children for Collaboration between Educational Environment and Speech-Language Pathology

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine elementary school teachers' experience and perceptions regarding bilingual language use of children in multicultural families. Methods: An initial questionnaire was formed through analysis of previous research and an interview with a teacher group. After the preliminary experiments, a final questionnaire was completed. The questionnaire was distributed to teachers in the Jeonrabuk-do region. One hundred eighty-nine questionnaires were collected and the results were analyzed through frequency and chi-square tests. Results: The 57.5% of teachers attended multicultural classes and there was a high demand for teacher education on school life problems and language development. The 20.4% of multicultural children spoke two languages, and 31.2% of teachers recommended bilingual language use. The main reasons for this recommendation were identity and self-stability, and the reasons for not recommending bilingual language use were academic problems and a delay in learning Korean. Teachers were generally positive about bilingualism, but most teachers thought that they should learn Korean first. The necessity of bilingual education was also positive, and they thought bilingual education was provided by parents, language development supporters, and speech language therapists. The bilingual learning period was in the order of kindergarten, birth, and elementary school. When examining the difference of perception according to background variables, there were statistical differences according to working area for bilingual learning, and age and career for bilingual education. Conclusion: Teachers' perception of bilingualism was positive, but they were urgently considering problems such as academic achievement, school life adjustments, and Korean language acquisition. In the field of speech language pathology, it is necessary to reconsider the role of speech language pathology in the field of education in relation to language acquisition including bilingual language acquisition.