ERIC Number: ED059766
Record Type: RIE
Publication Date: 1971-Nov
Reference Count: 0
Assumptions for Bilingual Instruction in the Primary Grades of Navajo Schools.
Wilson, Robert D.
A review of some assumptions made in the development and implementation of a bilingual-bicultural curriculum for Navajo students in the early primary grades is presented. The curriculum set out to develop and expand the students' abilities for learning, teaching them how to learn, so they could cope with change. It set out to sensitize them to the two cultures, so that they could cope with both; it also set out to structure what the teachers taught and to generalize how they taught, so that the students could cope with the school situation. The basic heuristic of the curriculum is to find the inherent and make them pervasive like growing veins in the organism. It is what the curriculum considers inherent and what the curriculum has done with the inherent that will characterize the assumptions reviewed in this paper. These assumptions include: (1) Randomization of pupil participation assures individual attention for all members of the class; (2) Teaching technique affects learning ability; and (3) Teacher-student ratio affect learning progress. (Author/CK)
Descriptors: Ability, Academic Achievement, American Indians, Bilingual Education, Cultural Differences, Cultural Pluralism, Curriculum Design, Hypothesis Testing, Learning Activities, Personality Change, Primary Education, Student Development, Student Participation, Student Teacher Ratio, Teaching Methods
Publication Type: N/A
Education Level: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Note: Paper presented at Conference on Child Language (Chicago, November 22-24, 1971)