DETERMINISM AND DETERMINATION - TOWARD TE ACHING EXCELLENCE IN A MINORITY CONTEXT

This article proposes a link or rapprochement between two domains of s tudy: studies in the domain of the sociology of language and bilingual development and studies of the teaching-learning process. The first s tudies have shown that language maintenance in minority context is lar gely socially determined by the degree of institutional support and by the degree of ethnolinguistic vitality of the community. Studies in t he second domain seem to suggest that the school as an institution and the quality of the teaching-learning process therein could contribute to the development of a determination to survive that could help coun ter the social determinism that leads to the linguistic and cultural a ssimilation of low vitality groups. Theoretical models that provide a general synthesis of these two domains of study are presented: a model of the determinants of additive and substractive bilingualism and a m acroscopic model of the teaching-learning process. An implementation m odel and other pedagogical practices are proposed in an attempt to arr ive at a pedagogy of excellence in a minority group context.