Viv Edwards

University of Reading · Institute of Education

This paper explores the impact of study abroad on the self-identity of Chinese doctoral students in the UK, with an emphasis on students’ agency and identity through the lens of Giddens’ (1991) reflexive project of the self’. Qualitative data comprising student perceptions and experiences of personal changes and development during their study abroa...

Academic mobility has attracted much attention in recent educational research. Previous studies focus mainly on study abroad students; relatively little attention, however, has been paid to the growing numbers of teachers of Chinese as a second language working abroad in Confucius Institutes, non-profit public institutions that aim to promote Chine...

Originally published in 1988, this book discusses the gradual move from the separation of home and school to an increasing acceptance of the central role of parents as partners in their children's education. The book looks at the progress made towards real partnership with parents. An eminently practical account of the advantages of working with pa...

This chapter offers an overview of continuing professional development (CPD) for Chinese teachers of English. We examine reasons for the growth of English teaching and the importance attached by the Chinese government to the role of CPD in the implementation of educational reform. We discuss early responses to these developments in the form of in-c...

The present study explores a topic which has been under-studied to date, namely the identity formation of Chinese PhD students in relation to study abroad. Underpinned by Giddens’ ‘reflexive project of the self’, which privileges agency and reflexivity, and using a narrative inquiry approach, it presents four students ‘stories’ collected through se...

Attention to trilingual education programmes in China has tended to focus on basic education; there had been little attention to date on the higher education sector. The present paper will attempt to bridge this gap by exploring a Yi-English-Chinese (YEC) trilingual education programme through case studies of three Yi students. We will start by bri...

This chapter offers an overview of continuing professional development (CPD) for Chinese teachers of English. We examine reasons for the growth of English teaching and the importance attached by the Chinese government to the role of CPD in the implementation of educational reform. We discuss early responses to these developments in the form of in-c...

In this article, we look at the continuing professional development (CPD) of English teachers - Through the lens of a decade of experience in providing three-month courses at a UK university for more than 800 teachers from the Western provinces of China. Our main focus will be on changes in teachers’ practice on their return.

This study aims to explore how Chinese overseas doctoral students adjust to a different academic, social and cultural environment, using Giddens’ theoretical framework of self-identity (1991). The findings indicate the participants proactively used various coping strategies in meeting challenges, and adapting to new social environments. Continuity...

In this paper, a series of vignettes is used to explore important current challenges in TESOL. These vignettes are drawn from many different settings, including Bengali-, Pahari- and Chinese-speaking children in UK primary schools, speakers of Aboriginal English in Australia and Chinese teachers of English on courses in Higher Education. A number o...

Report produced for the Open Society as an amicus brief for consideration in the case of Oršuš and Others v. Croatia by the European Court of Justics

This presentation tells a story about books for children in African languages. It is a tale of struggle and pain, of politics and profit. But does it have a happy ending?

Wales is one of the constituent nations of the United Kingdom. While sharing much of its political and social history with England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, it has retained a distinct cultural identity. In particular, over 560,000 people, a significant minority of the population of 2.2 million, speak Welsh, a member of the Celtic family of l...

Literacy is an issue of fundamental importance to educators, parents, and students. However, discussion of literacy learning and teaching has tended until relatively recently to be framed with monolingual populations in mind. In contrast, this contribution will explore literacy from the perspective of bilingual and multilingual education in all its...

This paper explores the ways in which learning technologies are helping to improve the status of minority languages in Europe and draws on the findings of three research projects – the Multilingual Resources for Children Project, the Multilingual Word Processing in the Primary School Project and Fabula: Bilingual Multimedia Storybooks for Children....

In this paper, a series of vignettes is used to explore important current challenges in TESOL. These vignettes are drawn from many different settings, including Bengali-, Pahari- and Chinese-speaking children in UK primary schools, speakers of Aboriginal English in Australia and Chinese teachers of English on courses in Higher Education. A number o...

Ongoing concern about low levels of literacy in South Africa has been the catalyst for a number of national reading campaigns. Nal’ibali (“Here’s the story” in Xhosa), however, is a campaign with a difference. It starts from the premise that stories – oral and written – are as important for literacy development as the more technical aspects of lear...

In recognizing 11 official languages, the 1996 South African Constitution provides a context for the management of diversity with important implications for the redistribution of wealth and power. The development and implementation of the language-in-education policies which might be expected to flow from the Constitution, however, have been slow a...

This article assesses the impact of a UK-based professional development programme on curriculum innovation and change in English Language Education (ELE) in Western China. Based on interviews, focus group discussions and observation of a total of 48 English teachers who had participated in an overseas professional development programme influenced b...

“Globalization”—or economic activity across national frontiers—is a relatively new term, usually applied to more recent population movements. The process to which it refers, however, started in the late 19th century, slowed in the period from the start of World War I, and has been gaining speed ever since, assisted by increasingly sophisticated com...

Growing interest in bilingual education in sub-Saharan Africa has highlighted an urgent need for reading material in African languages. In this paper, we focus on authors, one of several groups of stakeholders with responsibility for meeting this demand. We address three main issues: the nature and extent of African language publishing for children...

The commitment to multilingualism embedded in the 1996 South African Constitution has wide ranging implications for many aspects of education. This paper focuses on the dearth of teaching and learning materials in African languages required to deliver effective bilingual education, and on the potential role of translation in offering solutions for...

The South African constitution and related legislative tools provide a supportive framework for multilingual education. Successful implementation, however, requires appropriate learning materials and questions remain as to the vision and commitment of publishers to producing them. Based on an analysis of currently available books for children and i...

Although linguistic diversity has always been a defining feature of the British Isles, it has assumed new proportions in recent years, a period during which the transnational floe of people has been accompanied by a corresponding flow of languages. This paper charts the changing nature of diversity and the adaptations to which it has given rise on...

The present paper examines issues which emerged during the course of a project developing software for the production of bilingual multimedia stories in European languages of lesser diffusion. The language pairs in question are Basque and French, Catalan and Spanish, Dutch and Frisian, Irish and English and Welsh and English. Arguments are presente...

This textbook brings together research on literacy and multilingualism from a variety of settings: the learning of English in migrant destinations, immersion and bilingual education, and the maintenance of heritage languages. Designed to be accessible to students from a wide range of disciplines, the book explores multilingualism as a global phenom...

In the multilingual classrooms that are a feature of increasing numbers of schools in North America, Western Europe and Australia, vocabulary is seldom the sole focus of attention; more often it occurs as part of broader discussion. This chapter explores the key debates in which vocabulary has played a role. A description of the nature and extent o...

The findings reported in this chapter grew out of a research seminar involving representatives from a wide range of British universities whose experience encompassed both teaching and pastoral support. The aim was to explore issues in providing effective higher education for students from the People’s Republic of China and to disseminate informatio...

Multilingualism in the English-Speaking World: Pedigree of Nations explores the consequences of English as a global language and multilingualism as a social phenomenon. Written accessibly, it explores the extent of diversity in 'inner circle' English speaking countries (the UK, the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand) and examines...

This paper explores student and teacher perspectives of challenges relating to the levels of competence in English of Chinese students studying overseas from the perspective of critical pedagogy. It draws on two complementary studies undertaken by colleagues at the University of Reading. The first—a research seminar attended by representatives from...

This paper explores student and teacher perspectives of challenges relating to the levels of competence in English of Chinese students studying overseas from the perspective of critical pedagogy. It draws on two complementary studies undertaken by colleagues at the University of Reading. The first—a research seminar attended by representatives from...

Traditionally the emphasis in discussions of the economic value of languages has been on the impracticalities of using minority languages as the medium of instruction or of extending the use of minority languages to domains associated with official languages. Increasingly, however, perceptions are changing. In this paper I discuss two quite differe...

The quality of a country's human-resource base can be said to determine its level of success in social and economic development. This study focuses on some of the major human-resource development issues that surround the implementation of South Africa's policy of multilingualism in education. It begins by discussing the relationship between knowled...

This paper examines the achievements to date of Twf (“Growth“) — a project initiated as part of language planning efforts in Wales to encourage families to bring up their children to be bilingual. Evidence is presented of the ways in which the project has succeeded in raising awareness of the advantages of bilingualism amongst parents, prospective...

This paper examines language reproduction in the family in the context of a highly innovative project in Wales, where the Welsh language has been in decline for over a century. AlthoughWelsh-medium schooling has played a pivotal role in slowing and even reversing language shift in recent decades, there is mounting evidence of the dangers of over-re...

Multilingualism in the English-Speaking World: Pedigree of Nations explores the consequences of English as a global language and multilingualism as a social phenomenon. Written accessibly, it explores the extent of diversity in ‘inner circle’ English speaking countries (the UK, the USA, Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand) and examines...

One of the main priorities for the revitalization of the Welsh language is to increase the number of families currently transmitting the language to their children. In order to address this issue, the Welsh Language Board won funding from the National Assembly for Wales to establish a three-year project (2001/02 – 2003/04) to encourage parents to t...

Fabula, an interdisciplinary project funded by the EU Multimedia Software programme, provides software to enable children learning European minority languages to create bilingual digital books. We share a set of assumptions and approaches to the key issues addressed by the project. First, bilingual books are a powerful teaching tool of great value...

In this book, members of the ChiLPA Project explore the children’s literature of several different cultures, ranging from ancient India, nineteenth century Russia, and the Soviet Union, to twentieth century Britain, America, Australia, Sweden, and Finland. The research covers not only the form and content of books for children, but also their poten...

The advent of multimedia technology provides many new opportunities for accelerating learning in a range of situations, including language teaching. This paper describes the work of Fabula, a multinational, multidisciplinary project funded by the European Commission. It focuses, in particular, on the evaluation of a bilingual multimedia storybook w...

This article charts some of the issues which emerged when an Urdu word processing package was introduced into an urban primary school in southern England. Drawing on observation and interviews with teachers, parents and children over a period of 15 months, it maps teachers' initial expectations and what was actually achieved. Benefits for bilingual...

ilingual classrooms where two or three - or over ten - languages are spoken are now common throughout the English-speaking world, and most teachers will at some time find themselves working with learners of English as an additional language. Traditionally, the emphasis in schools has been exclusively on English but recently teachers have begun to u...

The last twenty years have seen the gradual move from the separation of home and school to an increasing acceptance of the central role of parents as partners in their children's education. At Home in School looks at the progress which has been made towards real partnership with parents. An eminently practical account of the advantages of working w...

Multilingual classrooms where two or three - or over ten - languages are spoken are now common throughout the English-speaking world, and most teachers will at some time find themselves working with learners of English as an additional language. Traditionally, the emphasis in schools has been exclusively on English but recently teachers have begun...

One of the consequences of the unprecedented scale of population movement in the last fifty years is that multilingual classrooms have become the norm in many cities throughout the English-speaking world and continental Europe. The extent of this linguistic diversity is staggering. In 1990, a third of the largest school districts in the USA had ove...

When children first start school, they encounter many new kinds of interaction. They have to learn to take turns in much larger groups than they experience in a family setting; they discover that some topics of discussion are more acceptable than others; they also find that their contributions are evaluated by teachers in ways which often differ ma...

Gentle probing of even those societies which are officially monolingual invariably exposes a surprising level of linguistic diversity. The increasing interdependence of nations which has marked the second half of the twentieth century, however, has ensured that unprecedented numbers of city schools in Europe and the English speaking world are servi...

The presence of a large and highly visible minority of non-White children in British schools over the last thirty years has raised many questions about the most appropriate and effective routes to education for a multiracial — and a multilingual — society. Many of these children spoke a language other than English on arrival and most of them have m...

Word-processing in a language which uses non-Latin scripts is a relatively recent development in the UK. Nonetheless, early initiatives suggest that multilingual word-processing has a range of educational applications. It provides teachers with a cheap and semi-professional way of producing multilingual resources. It helps to raise the status of co...

Literacy is the second volume of the Encyclopedia of Language and Education, the first attempt to overview an area which has emerged as a coherent and exciting field of study in the last two decades. While forming part of a series of eight volumes, Literacy also stands on its own, drawing on some 25 state-of-the-art reviews of current concerns in t...

Changing populations in many parts of Europe and the English-speaking world have given rise to multilingual classrooms, new pedagogies and new learning materials. This paper discusses multilingual resources for children - books in languages other than English as well as dual language books written in both community (or heritage) languages and Engli...

This topic was one of the focuses for The Multilingual Resources for Children Project undertaken at The University of Reading 1992–4. The aim of the Project was to investigate the nature and use of multilingual resources for reading, writing and speaking and listening in United Kingdom primary Schools. The languages the Project was concerned with –...

This paper explores some of the ways in which different world views produce a range of responses to the printed word. We begin with a discussion of the literacy practices of White fundamentalist Christians in the United States and of settlers from the Indian subcontinent and Hong Kong in the United Kingdom. The world view of these various groups di...

This paper presents an overview of developments over the last ten years in the teaching of the languages spoken within the various ethnic minority communities in the UK. It considers the ways in which arguments in favour of bilingualism have been articulated with increas ing clarity during this period. It then focuses on the three sectors that deli...

Building bridges extends the debate on resources in multilingual classrooms in new directions. It focuses on the languages other than English that are most commonly spoken by British school children– Bengali, Chinese, Gujarati, Panjabi and Urdu; and it looks at ways in which decisions about language, typography, production and design affect both re...

This article is a response to Grace Feuerverger's contribution in the current issue of Language and Education which describes a multicultural literacy intervention for minority students in Toronto. Whereas the use of multilingual resources is a recent phenomenon in Canada, British schools have been using such materials for over a decade. While agre...

Comment on the focus paper for the issue by John Edwards

In 1988, the Economic and Social Research Council funded a number of projects which centred on the significance of cultural, linguistic and/or perceived racial differences in the learning experiences of children. This occasional paper discusses developments which led up to this initiative, in particular the philosophical debate on cultural diversit...

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Although both Britain and Canada have a history of bilingualism, post-war immigration has created a far greater degree of linguistic and cultural diversity than was previously the case. The World in a Classroom is a comparative study of how British and Canadian schools have adapted to the needs of multilingual populations. It draws both on publishe...

This paper discusses a recent British research project that aimed to incorporate sociolinguistic research into classroom procedures. One of the goals of the project was to enlist teachers and their students as researchers, in order to obtain systematic information on local dialect grammar. A further aim was to encourage students to explore their ow...

The underachievement of ethnic minority children continues to be an issue for educators in many parts of the world. Attempts to explain and remedy this underachievement have been many and varied. Recent discussions, however, have focused increasingly on the notion of institutional racism and a number of commentators have tried to identify the ways...

It was found in the Language Census of 1987 that there were 172 different languages spoken by children in Inner London Education Authority Schools. In this volume, the descriptions of different speech communities draws attention to the cultural renewals taking place within the value frame of each community. In its attempt to chart the dimensions of...