Article In:
Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education: Online-First Articles

Equality of access to minority language assessments and interventions in immersion education

A case study of Irish-medium education

| Dublin City University
In the Republic of Ireland (RoI), Irish is recognised as the first official language of the state. The public has the right to conduct all business with the state solely through the medium of Irish if they wish. The reality, however, is that many government bodies only provide services in English. This article discusses the language used for assessments and interventions for students with special educational needs (SEN) in Irish-medium (IM) primary and post-primary schools in the RoI. A mixed methods study was conducted, with teachers from schools (n = 56) completing an online questionnaire at first and then teachers (n = 32) undertaking semi-structured interviews. The findings suggest that students in IM schools are not being afforded access to services in Irish and many challenges exist for these schools when meeting the SEN of students. Recommendations are made around how to strengthen educational policy and practice to enable IM teachers meet the needs of all students.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Special educational needs in immersion education
    • 2.1Immersion schools in the RoI
    • 2.2Immersion education internationally
    • 2.3Research questions
  • 3.Methods
    • 3.1Questionnaire
      • 3.1.1The construction of the questionnaire
      • 3.1.2Questionnaire participant profile
      • 3.1.3Semi-structured Interviews
      • 3.1.4Interview participant profile
      • 2.1.5Triangulation
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Lack of assessment and teaching resources
    • 4.2Availability of Irish language educational service providers
    • 4.3Assessments currently used in Schools
  • 5.Discussion and conclusions
    • 5.1Recommendations
    • 5.2Limitations
  • Author queries
  • References
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