ABSTRACT
Deryck Cowling
The rapid growth of the French immersion program in Canada since the late 1960 s has been one of the most significant innovations in the Canadian education community. The program grew out of a uniquely Canadian experiment which began in 1965 and was known as the St. Lambert sBilingual School Study Group. From that initial classroom experiment, the French immersion program grew rapidly during the 70 s and 80 s until presently it enrolls over 300 000 pupils or 6% of all Canadian students.
The purpose of this study will be threefold. Firstly, it will attemptto determine the perceptions of the effect of locating a district-wideFrench immersion program in an inner city high school. Secondly, it willanalyze the nature of those effects on the school s culture or ethos. Finally,it will discuss the implications of those effects in terms of improving the focus school s effectiveness and in promoting educational change.
The setting for this particular study will be Nanaimo District Secondary School which has been the secondary immersion center for School District #68 (Nanaimo/Ladysmith) for the past ten years. During that period,French immersion pupils have constituted generally between fifteen to twenty percent of the total school s enrollment of over a thousand pupils, andthe program has had a very significant impact on the school s organizationand culture.
The primary instrument for the collection of data regardingstakeholders perceptions will be a series of interviews following a similar format but with adaptations for the perspectives of students,teachers/administrators, parents, and other stakeholders--both immersion and non-immersion. Comparisons and analysis of responses will then be used to identifytrends and general perceptions that may suggest significant influences on the school s culture. This, in turn, may lead to important implications regarding the organization of schools and their effectiveness. Further exploration in terms of gathering and confirming data will be in the form of document analysis and surveys of representative stakeholders.
Experience suggests that new and innovative programs in our education system often live or die on the basis of peoples perceptions of the program s worth more so than on thebasis of their intrinsic value educationally. The results of this study may give some insights intothat phenomena and suggest means by which educators can improve schoolcultures and effect meaningful change in them.