Patterns of Teacher Interaction in an Immersion School in Montreal

The author explored the interactions of a linguistically mixed teaching staff of an immersion school in Montreal to determine their influence on the integrative objectives of immersion programs. Teachers' formal and informal interactions were observed to feature the predominant use of English and the use of silence to avoid code switching and functioned to manage conflict to the detriment of integrative immersion goals. The author found that conflict among the staff arose from disagreements about immersion programs, conflicting societal and professional norms and the school's organizational divisions. A projective technique was used to determine if perceptions of linguistic norms of 176 grades 1 to 6 pupils reflected the interactions of eight immersion and four English stream teachers. The author underlines the importance of the interactional context and organization of schools with mixed staff groups of achieving bilingual education goals.

PhD dissertation

McGill University

Montreal

1981

[viii]-247p.

en