Bicultural and Trilingual Education: The Foyer Model in Brussels (Multilingual Matters Series 54)

This is a collection of articles which describe and assess the Foyer Model, a project for schooling minority children in Brussels, which aims for bicultural and trilingual education. It demonstrates the need for an appropriate education model in a culturally and linguistically complex society. The Foyer Model was created to help Spanish, Moroccan, Italian and Turkish children in Brussels. It recognizes the need for proficiency in their home language and also in the two languages of Brussels - French and Dutch. It also aims to ease any conflicts between their culture of origin and their host culture. This book originated in evaluations conducted as the first pupils ended their primary school careers. It assesses the model's success so far and reports on those who work with it every day. This is not an exhaustive account, but rather an introduction to the programme's main characteristics and its importance to Europe as a whole. The immediate origin of this book lies in the process of evaluation of the Foyer Model which took place in 1986 and 1987.