Intercultural bilingual education

Intercultural bilingual education (IBE) or bilingual intercultural education (BIE) is an intercultural and bilingual model of education designed for contexts with two (or more) cultures and languages in contact. In the typical case, the different languages are associated with a dominant and an underprivileged or minority culture.

The IBE has been most prominently promoted and developed for use in Latin America. Most countries may have areas in which such models could be used. There indigenous movements in several nations have gained use of the IBE model in indigenous education, rather than the former monolingual education in Spanish. Since the late 20th century, IBE has become an important, more or less successful instrument of governmental language planning in several Latin American countries. These include bilingual education in Mayan languages in Guatemala, and Quechua in Peru, and Mayan in Mexico.

Colin Baker distinguishes four models of education for bilingual or multilingual contexts. The first two models of assimilation of the minority to the dominant culture and language, while the two others have the aim of multilingualism and multiculturalism.

After the nation states gained independence in Latin America at the beginning of the 19th century, the elites imposed a model of unification based on the Criollo culture and Spanish or Portuguese language as used by the colonial rulers. This system reached only the privileged classes and those parts of the mestizo population speaking Spanish or Portuguese.

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