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Understanding and Implementing a Whole-Language Program in Quebec

This article describes the development and implementation of a whole-language program in Quebec, a unilingual French province. It focuses on the meaning of educational change and the change process at various levels of the Quebec educational system. Four structures influenced the whole-language movement in Quebec: (1) the Ministry of Education, (2) McGill University, (3) various school boards, and (4) professional associations. They continue to serve as mechanisms for educators to clarify their educational goals in a dialogic context. The initial stages of implementing the provincial whole-language arts curriculum caused a period of disequilibrium among educators, especially with respect to the issue of centralized versus decentralized curricula. Interview data indicate that three groups of teachers are attempting to abandon traditional transmission models of teaching and to think through the implications of research on young children's language and learning. Reflective teachers know about whole language and continue to refine the concept for themselves based on current theory and research. Eclectic teachers adopt some whole-language practices but are still in search of easy whole-language solutions to teaching. Resistant and unreflective teachers either have not grasped the concept or refuse to consider any change in their classroom practices or teaching-learning ideology. Some ideological contradictions mediate between Quebec society and the consciousness of different groups of people concerned about the teaching-learning relation.