Towards Designing a Native Model of Education for Bilingual Areas of Iran

This research is aimed at addressing one of the most important language issues of Iran, i.e., the educational justice for the students in bilingual areas, and the possibility of designing a native model for education in these areas. First, the educational planning and policies in 13 countries are reviewed; Then, the results of the empirical studies regarding the academic achievement of the students in bilingual areas of Iran will be discussed to find the answers to the following questions: what educational policies are implemented in countries around the world? What bilingual education strategies are implemented? What do the results of studies about academic achievement of bilingual students of Iran imply? What are the considerations for designing a native model of education in Iran? The results show that creating and maintaining a sense of nationalism, achieving educational justice, economical situations, and language distribution in all countries are the important factors in choosing educational strategies. The policies and strategies have been changed during time in all countries. The monolingual strategy especially in multilingual, and remote areas is proved to be ineffective in most studies. Based on empirical studies in Iran, the academic performance of most of the students in bilingual areas is significantly weaker than the Persian speaking students which can be interpreted as the ineffectiveness of the existing methods. The students’ first language and their similarities and differences to Persian have significant effect on the students’ achievements. The positive effect of pre-school programs has been proven in many studies. To design a native model of education, it is necessary to consider different bilingual education strategies and methods, the linguistic, and cultural features of bilingual areas of Iran, the successful models implemented by other countries, and training the experts in this field.