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Africa's educational systems are undergoing a quiet revolution. As these systems move away from working exclusively in the old colonial languages, usually English or French, bilingual schools which use local indigenous languages are springing up in many regions of Africa. This paper points out the historical processes driving the bilingual education movement in Burkina Faso. Since 1997, a school's parent association has been able transform the unilingual school in their community to a bilingual school. Bilingual education means a transitional system starting with the children's first language and gradually transferring to French. Another characteristic of bilingual schools is that they add cultural activities (story telling, songs, dance, music) and productive activities (agriculture, cattle rearing, woodworking) to the basic curriculum. This paper analyses the impact of this emerging new pedagogy on the teachers and students. The analysis is based on the author's experience teaching in Burkina Faso in 2003 and her fieldwork in 2006. The data is collected from two months of descriptive-analytical classroom observations. This paper argues that bilingual education improves student and community participation. The paper also looks at teacher practices and how bilingual education affects their relation with their pupils.
