ABSTRACT
Shohamy (2008) defines language policy as “concerned with issues of managing language, specifically focusing on motivations for and decisions of how language should be used in various entities” (p. 305). Language education policies address language policy specifically in schools and universities. This chapter illustrates the ways in which some of the challenges of Israeli language and educational policies have been approached practically and conceptually through the institutionalization of bilingual Russian-Hebrew preschool education. 1 Following Ekholm and Trier (1987), “institutionalization” is taken to be the introduction of an innovation into an organization such that the innovation becomes a stable part of the routine of the organization. More specifically, this chapter presents the challenges and non-linear processes (Miles & Louis, 1987) involved in the implementation and institutionalization of the First Language First (FLF) model of bilingual growth, an innovative program that was modified over time in order to respond to changing sociopolitical forces and thus remain stable (see also the FLF model in Schwartz, 2014).
