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The Language of Instruction Issue: Framing an Empirical Perspective
Abstract
Some Terminological and Conceptual PreliminariesDemographic Dimensions of the LoI IssueEducational Dimensions of the Language of Instruction IssueConclusion
... Many multilingual classrooms around the world typically exist as a result of the official language of instruction differing from the primary language(s) of many (if not all) students. At the time of writing, Walter (2010) notes that one third of the world's population is not provided with access to education in their primary language, understood as the language in which they have greatest proficiency. In the case of science, a number of reviews (e.g. ...
... More specifically, research has documented that non-native speakers of the language of instruction find it harder to express their ideas (Curtis & Millar, 1988), have greater difficulty applying their ideas to everyday life (Bunyi, 1999) and face difficulties with reading and writing (see Rollnick, 2000 for review). More generally, Walter (2010) argues that language of instruction is an important variable impacting the quality of education with implications for cognitive outcomes, access and participation, and the cost effectiveness of schooling. ...
... Discussion of the evidence documenting the pedagogical advantage of instruction in students' primary language is often linked to the socio-political causes -e.g. colonial history, occupation, or the imposition of a standard language variety on minority groups -which deny students access to education in the language in which they are most proficient (Reaser & Adger, 2010;Walter, 2010). In such contexts, education in a primary language is often seen as a right. ...
Science education in the Arab world is conducted in a variety of multilingual contexts, presenting a challenge to improving the quality of science education in the region. When science is taught in Arabic, diglossia-the coexistence of the formal language of literacy alongside a local spoken variety-constitutes a multilingual setting the implications of which need to be understood. This study compares teacher-student interaction in two first grade elementary classrooms where science was taught in Arabic by two different teachers with different preferences regarding the use of Arabic language varieties. Four lessons in each classroom, covering the same curricular material, were video-and audio-recorded and later transcribed. Every teacher and student utterance was coded at six levels: class, participant, Arabic language variety, length of utterance, move, and function. Quantitative descriptive analyses are reported and qualitative illustrations of key patterns are presented and analyzed. Typical IRF patterns of classroom discourse were identified in both classes, but differences in the purposes to which IRF sequences were put could be identified and the roles played by Arabic language varieties described. The study is framed and results discussed in terms of three perspectives: a sociocultural perspective on the role of language in teaching and learning; a three-pronged perspective on multilingual classrooms in which language can be viewed as a problem, a right and a resource; and the sociolinguistics and psychology of Arabic diglossia.
... ■ Children perform better and learn faster. ■ It is more efficient, especially if teachers can use their mother tongue for teaching children in that same language (Walter 2008(Walter , 2014. ■ It reduces the gap between home culture and school culture. ...
... In all other situations, multilingual environments serve to hinder, rather than to help children in their language development (Barac and Bialystok, 2012). As Walter (2008) has shown, it is generally better if children first develop Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) in a designed language that is reasonably close to the discerned language of the learner -this usually happens only in the teenage years (Skuttnab-Kangas, 2012). A well-developed CALP in one language helps the development of similar competences in another language. ...
The starting point of this book is in the decolonial visions of Vansina and Prah who hold that the old cultural traditions in Africa have been destroyed but that new African ways of interpreting the world are emerging. A key role in this is played by education. As Prah, Wolff, and others have argued, such education has to be based on African languages and African values.
Using a quantitative comparative analysis, this study shows for the first time that maintaining former colonial languages as medium of instruction will become impossible to sustain. Over the next decade, African countries will have to move towards increased use of African languages.
Over the years, the choice of which African languages to use has vexed researchers and policymakers. This study points to an innovative way out of that conundrum, using five principles. It demonstrates how all over the world, designed languages can and do serve speakers of several discerned languages. The book contains six brief case studies, showing how a choice of such designed languages can offer practical policy options in Africa.
Using African languages in education will also bolster the new, decolonized cultural traditions that are already taking shape on the continent.
... -It is more efficient, especially if teachers can use their mother tongue for teaching children in that same language (Walter, 2008(Walter, , 2014. -It reduces the gap between home culture and school culture. ...
... In all other situations, multilingual environments serve to hinder, rather than to help children in their language development (Barac and Bialystok, 2012). As Walter (2008) has shown, it is generally better if children first develop Cognitive/Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) in a designed language that is reasonably close to the discerned language of the learner -this usually happens only in the teenage years (Skuttnab-Kangas, 2012). A well-developed CALP in one language helps the development of similar competences in another language. ...
Why has Africa not been doing so well and what is the way forward? This book starts with the analysis of Vansina and Prah: the old cultural traditions in Africa have been destroyed in colonial times; new ones are currently taking shape, based in part in African languages. The book uses new insights gained from Hofstede’s approach to cross-cultural psychology to show that such new cultural traditions are indeed forming in Africa. These will be key to Africa’s decolonization.
As Prah and others have argued, decolonization needs to address the problem that almost all African countries continue to use a former colonial language in secondary and higher education.
Using a quantitative comparative analysis, this study shows for the first time that maintaining former colonial languages as medium of instruction will become impossible to sustain. Over the next decade, more and more African countries will have to move towards increased use of African languages.
Over the years, the choice of which African languages to use has vexed researchers and policy makers. Using five principles, this study points to an innovative way out of that conundrum. It demonstrates how all over the world, designed languages can and do serve speakers of several discerned languages. The book contains five brief case studies, showing how in fact using such designed languages is a practical possibility in Africa as well.
Using African languages in education will also bolster the new, decolonized cultural traditions that are already taking shape on the continent.
... One obvious educational consequence is that children grow up speaking the vernacular and are required to develop proficiency in the standard variety as well as literacy in it when they come to school. Fishman (Fishman 1967) and others extended this definition to fit societies where the higher functions are filled by a language unrelated to the home variety: this of course applies to the millions of children who come to schools using as language of instruction a standard language different from their home variety (Walter 2008). (Hudson 2002) refers to (Fernández 1993), a bibliography of more than 3,000 items on diglossia, and adopts the original, though slightly modified definition of Ferguson while considering the others to be cases of societal bilingualism. ...
... There have been many studies of the question: one that is often quoted is Modiano (1973Modiano ( , 1988, which showed that Indian children in Chiapas taught to read in their native language learnt to read Spanish faster and better than those taught initially in the standard language. This was replicated in studies with Navajo children (Rosier and Holm 1980;Spolsky 1975), and is presumably an important factor in accounting for the evidence of success of educational programs that provide initial instruction in the native language (Walter 2003(Walter , 2008 and of many vernacular and bilingual programs (Hull and Hernandez 2008;King and Benson 2008;Reaser and Adger 2008;Reyes and Moll 2008). ...
Abstract Many people still believe, as once was commonly assumed, that literacy
simply means knowing how to read and write a particular script. Thus, we divide
people into literates and illiterates, and worry about how to teach the latter a skill
that would move them into the former class. However, as a result of the work of
Scribner and Cole (The psychology of literacy. Cambridge MA: Harvard University
Press, 1981), we are now more inclined to talk about “literary practices”, the
application of reading skill “for specific purposes in specific contexts of use” (1981,
p. 37). The old simple model that assumed that literacy was a result of schooling has
been shown to leave out the many cases in which various groups develop literacy
skills for particular purposes, and scholars nowadays are as likely to speak about
literacies or multi-literacies (See Macken-Horarik and Adoniou (2008), Handbook
of educational linguistics (pp. 367–382). Malden MA: Blackwell Publishing) as
about being able to read and write. This complexity is important when we attempt to
understand the problem of the relationship between literacy in a standard or sacred
language and literacy practices in the vernacular variety. In this paper, we will discuss
problematic aspects of developing literacy in a diglossic situation. We will then
describe a project that attempted to address some of these difficulties in the context
of diglossic Arabic.
... They concluded that for minority students, the most prominent predictor of long-term success in school is the long-term opportunity to use and develop their first language in and alongside second language and content learning. Additionally, it has been claimed this not only strengthens their cultural and ethnic identity, which is seen as important for their experience of being valued in school (e.g., Cummins, 2000, p. 34;Dewilde, 2019;Kjelaas & Fagerheim, 2021, p. 34), but also leads to more effective second language learning (e.g., Bakken, 2007, p. 17;Cook, 2001;Cummins, 2007;Norton, 1998) and is associated with positive linguistic, cognitive and academic growth (e.g., Garcia & Wei, 2013;Lewis et al., 2012;Macaro, 2005;Peal & Lambert, 1962;Turnbull & Dailey-O'Cain, 2009;Vygotsky, 2012;Walter, 2008). ...
This study explores the experiences and evolving stance of a newly arrived adolescent student, Hamid, regarding the use of his first language as a tool for learning in the transition from introduction classes to vocational education and training (VET). The article is based on fieldnotes and interviews from a larger linguistic ethnographic fieldwork and draws on a critical sociolinguistic framework. It reveals that while Hamid initially intended to distance himself from his first language upon transitioning to the mainstream school system, it ultimately emerges as an indispensable linguistic capital for navigating the language and literacy practices of VET. Such a finding challenges prevailing educational policy and practice in Norway, which prioritizes linguistic scaffolding based on students’ first language(s) only at the outset of their educational trajectories and assumes its diminishing relevance over time spent in the country. In the analysis, Bourdieu's (1977) concept of capital is employed as a conceptual lens to interpret Hamid’s experiences and reflections. Furthermore, the study considers how scaffolding (Bruner, 1966) and disciplinary literacy interact and influence Hamid’s stance.
... The results are strikingly similar: limited access to schooling; high repetition, failure, and dropout rates; poor quality of education; and low learner self-esteem -all of which are well documented. While acknowledging that the language factor does not stand alone, Walter (2008), found a distributional relationship between learners' access to education in their first language (L1) and level of national development, demonstrating that countries that do not provide access to L1 education experience the lowest levels of literacy and educational attainment worldwide. ...
The 19th century was a very complicated and momentous period in the history of the Azerbaijani state; As a result of the signing of the Gulustan and Turkmenchay treaties, the national territory was divided in two, which caused certain difficulties for the people. The tsarist occupation tried by various means to add the population of the new colony to its interests and objectives, for which education played a fundamental role. However, despite attempts to undermine national unity, the growing access to education was forming a group of intellectuals who in the future would lead the national liberation movements, and in the same way helped to promote and preserve identity, and traditional values of the nation. For this, the dissemination of the Azerbaijani language in educational processes was very relevant, whose analysis constitutes the main objective of this research.
... This apartheid and the concomitant failure of the school system are, in turn, among the factors that seem correlated with Haiti's overwhelming poverty (Dejean 2006;Dejean and DeGraff 2013). Indeed, it has been convincingly argued that, by and large, countries that do not use their populations' native languages as the generalized media of instruction are those with the worst records of academic achievement and the worst levels of national development (Walter 2008;Hebblethwaite 2012). ...
... The findings are very similar: "limited access to schooling, high repetition, failure, and dropout rates; poor quality of education; and low learner self-esteem. In addition, Walter (2008) has displayed that there is 'a distributional relationship' between learners' access to education in their first language (L1) and the level of national development. He showed that countries that do not support access to L1 education encounter the lowest levels of literacy and education attainment across the world. ...
The multi-linguistic nature of Moroccan society entails the existence of different languages such as Moroccan Arabic, Amazigh Language with its varieties, Standard Arabic, French, and English. From this group, the Moroccan education system opts for two main languages as official mediums of instruction: standard Arabic and French; Arabic starting from the first level in primary school and French beginning from the first year in secondary school. This state of fact challenges the notions of inclusion and equality in the Moroccan education system. Students are being taught in languages different from their mother tongues. The focal objective of this paper is to prove that the gap between the languages used at school and students’ home languages harms the students’ learning outcomes, integration, self-esteem, and self-confidence. To test the validity of this claim, the paper uses a mixed-method approach; a questionnaire is addressed to 200 high school science students to investigate how the absence of their home languages affects their learning outcomes, participation in classroom activities, self-esteem, and self-confidence. In addition, 20 high school teachers are interviewed to detect the negative impact of the mediums of instruction on the students’ learning outcomes, participation in the classroom activities, self-esteem, and self-confidence. Findings reveal that languages of instruction form a real hindrance to guaranteeing quality education for students. All the teachers’ interviewed confirmed that using the official mediums of instruction in the classroom hampers students’ performances and affects their results.
... Worldwide, many indigenous peoples experience language-related problems in formal education because they often attend schools that do not provide linguistically or culturally-appropriate pedagogy (Sophocleous, 2011;Walter, 2008). In an attempt to address these problems, governments formulate educational policies based on specific pedagogical ideals. ...
Based on Bourdieu’s theory of practice, this article explores pedagogical ideals and educational policies in teachers’ everyday practice in a postcolonial bilingual university setting in Greenland. Greenlandic and Danish teachers’ teaching ideals were explored during a one-year pedagogy qualifying course for assistant professors organised by the (Danish) authors in cooperation with University of Greenland. The overall pedagogical agenda placed an emphasis on student activity. Both Greenlandic and Danish teachers’ representations of their practice accounted for the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of their indigenous students, but they did so in different ways. Whereas Greenlandic teachers tended to emphasise formal correctness in the use of Greenlandic language and student understanding and translation of the learning objectives, Danish teachers tended to lower their own perceived academic norms and graded certain students more leniently in order to compensate for both their dominant role as teacher and for postcolonial dominance.
... The switch to English as LoLT in Grade 4 is described in the literature as an 'early exit' model of bilingual education (Walter 2008). Various models of bilingual education exist; however, drawing on the literature around bilingual education, we have created Figure 1 to show the five most common models of bilingual education. ...
Background: English is the dominant language in South African schools although it is the home language for less than 10% of the population. Many schools have yet to embrace the Language in Education Policy’s advocacy of additive bilingualism. This has led to a majority of the country’s children learning and being assessed through a language in which they lack proficiency.
Aim: This article draws on second language teaching and learning theory to make a case for more systematic support for learners’ second language development and for legitimation of use of home language in mathematics classrooms where a different language is the official medium. The article shares empirical data from a South African Grade 4 mathematics teacher’s classroom to illuminate arguments in favour of additive bilingualism.
Setting: A non-fee-paying public school in Eastern Cape province of South Africa.
Methods: Data were collected through lesson observations, teacher interviews and assessment data generated by a professional development project initiative.
Results: The ‘illuminatory’ lesson data suggest that allowing learners to use their home language alongside English facilitated their mathematical sense-making. This suggestion is strengthened by assessment data from a larger development project mandated with exploring ways for improving the quality of primary mathematics teaching and learning.
Conclusion: Insights from this article add to many other calls made for more sustained and serious consideration of the pedagogical and epistemological value of multilingual approaches for South African classrooms.
... Thus, the status of a child's home language variety impacts participation in education, especial ly for those students entering an education system without a high level of proficiency in the standard language variety used as the medium of instruction. Approximately one third of the world's children undertake formal education without being proficient in the lan guage of schooling, and most of these children are in developing countries (Walter, 2008). This means that for some of the least advantaged children across the world, learning aca demic content and attaining literacy occurs simultaneously with learning the language of instruction. ...
Language is fundamental to teaching and learning, yet is prone to invisibility in education systems. Drawing on work from applied linguistics that foregrounds language use in education, a “power” heuristic can be used to highlight linguistic privilege and its implications for students and their individual language repertoires. Language can be understood as a tool for performing particular interpersonal and ideational functions; its structure and uses are determined by context. For most students, experiences of language that is education-related reside in three core domains: the home and community, the school, and the nation state. Language expectations in these domains vary and position the linguistic repertoires of students differently. A key consideration is the student’s first language and its relationship to the expectations and privileged varieties of different institutions, for example, the local school and the national education department. By foregrounding linguistic privilege in education, the alignment, or misalignment, between students’ language resources and the prevailing language norms of educational institutions is made visible and open to change. Inherent in the level of alignment are issues of educational inclusion, access to powerful language forms and genres, and academic achievement. The concept of power affordances can be used to refer to the enabling potential of the relationship between language status, language affiliation and a student’s linguistic repertoire. Power affordances can operate as three broad potentials, capabilities or statuses: socioeconomic power, which resides in the language of global and state institutions ranging from government to schools and manifests in instruments such as national standardized tests; sociocognitive power, which enables the capacity to learn and recognizes the language intensity of knowledge; and identity power, which references social belonging and is strongly indexed to language. Conceptualizing language and its power affordances in education provides a useful framework for understanding the relationship between students’ language resources and the often implicit linguistic demands and practices of education systems. It also highlights the rich potential of applied linguistics in understanding education.
... Esta exclusión del idioma nacional innegablemente socava cualquier acceso sostenible a nivel nacional a la educación de calidad (UNESCO 2006). Segundo, Dejean explica que este uso "al-revés" del francés en Haití le pone trabas al desarrollo del país (véase Walter 2008, Hebblethwaithe 2012. ...
Sostenemos que los idiomas locales, en conjunto con la pedagogía moderna y la tecnología, son ingredientes necesarios pero no suficientes para el acceso universal a una educación de calidad. Nuestro estudio de caso es Haití, donde el francés es el idioma primario de instrucción escolar, a pesar de que tan sólo lo habla una porción pequeña de la población; mientras que el creole haitiano (kreyòl), el idioma que hablan con fluidez todos los haitianos en Haití, se excluye en su mayoría del discurso formal y de los documentos escritos que crean y transmiten conocimiento (y poder) en las escuelas, cortes, oficinas estatales, etcétera. Comenzamos por describir los trasfondos históricos, políticos, lingüísticos y socioculturales de dichos impedimentos a la educación de calidad en Haití. Luego presentamos y analizamos los datos que comienzan a responder a las siguientes dos
preguntas: (i) ¿Cómo se da el cambio en contextos poscoloniales complejos, especialmente en cuanto a las actitudes de educadores hacia el uso de idiomas estigmatizados (como el kreyòl) en la educación formal? (ii) ¿De qué modo los idiomas locales como
el kreyòl sirven para fortalecer la promoción y diseminación de la pedagogía moderna y la tecnología para la educación en ciencias, tecnología, ingeniería y matemáticas (CTIM), y viceversa?—es decir, ¿cómo puede la educación en CTIM, a su vez, fortalecer la promoción
de idiomas estigmatizados como el kreyòl?
... Research by Baker (2011) and Spolsky and Hult (2010) highlights the importance of high ability in the home language for cognition and emotional development for children in second language settings. Research in the USA by Thomas and Collier (cited in Walter, 2010) shows that children whose mother tongue is a language other than English perform poorly in education experienced through the English language only. Clearly, there are many complex factors behind these outcomes, but language of instruction is an important issue meriting further investigation. ...
... The use of native languages is also crucial for teachers, as we are currently researching and documenting in our ongoing NSF-funded project for STEM education in Kreyòl (http://haiti.mit.edu). Furthermore, researchers have convincingly argued that, by and large, countries that do not use their populations' mother tongues as languages of instruction are those with the worst records of academic achievement and national development (Hebblethwaite 2012;Walter 2008). Yet, in regard to the communities that most need access to quality education and quality materials in their native languages, policymakers have long neglected such momentous findings. ...
This article aims at a deeper understanding of the importance of native languages in education and development, with Haiti as a case study. About half of Haiti’s population is illiterate. Among ten children who enter the first grade, at most one (10%) will graduate from high school; a large proportion will drop out of school at an early age. Language is a factor in such academic failure. Education in Haiti is carried out mostly in French, which is spoken fluently by at most 5% of the population, while the language spoken by 100% of the population, namely Haitian Creole (Kreyòl), is by and large excluded from the school system, in spite of legislation, official curricula, and various efforts from civil society to generalize the classroom use of Kreyòl. This article reports on the results of an intervention to improve early-grade reading and writing in Haiti. It argues that the systematic classroom use of Kreyòl—at all levels, but especially in early grades—promotes academic success. The article also draws implications for policy, to enhance reading and writing in Haiti.
... Research by Baker (2011) and Spolsky and Hult (2010) highlights the importance of high ability in the home language for cognition and emotional development for children in second language settings. Research in the USA by Thomas and Collier (cited in Walter, 2010) shows that children whose mother tongue is a language other than English perform poorly in education experienced through the English language only. Clearly, there are many complex factors behind these outcomes, but language of instruction is an important issue meriting further investigation. ...
In May 2012, the Department of Children and Youth Affairs with the Department of Education and Skills commissioned research through the Irish Research Council (IRC) to examine concepts of school readiness among parents of children availing of the free pre-school year.The views of early years educators, managers of early years settings, primary school principals and junior infant teachers were also sought. The contract for the research study was awarded by the IRC to a combined research team from Mary Immaculate College, Limerick,
and the Dublin Institute of Technology.
... While there is no explicit directive in the 1997 South African Language in Education Policy nor in the current curriculum, the majority of schools are officially encouraged to, and do, follow an early exit model of bilingualism (Walter 2008) where children are expected to transition abruptly from 'home language' (HL) instruction in Grade R to Grade 3, to English as language of learning and teaching (LoLT) from the beginning of Grade 4. This sudden switch in LoLT can only make sense if one is working with a monoglossic ideology of languages as discrete and clearly boundaried entities. Additionally, the idea that one can learn exclusively through a language after only a few hours of exposure when that language is taught as a subject over the course of a week, depends on the mythical 'cultural construction of language in general as a stable, contextless individual mental object' (Blommaert 2006: 512). ...
While there have been significant paradigm shifts in conceptualising language in applied linguistics and in critiquing the historical monolingual bias in the discipline, monolingual approaches continue to dominate officially prescribed language teaching and learning approaches, curricula, policy and materials in South African education. In this paper we argue that monolingual ideologies have negative consequences for the positioning of South African learners as well as for their participation in the curriculum. We focus on how learner capacities are enabled when a heteroglossic and multimodal orientation to language practices and meaning-making is taken up. We explore processes of languaging-for-learning in two established third spaces—the first, an after-school literacy club for Grades 3–6 learners in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, and the second, a mathematics holiday programme for Grade 11 students in the rural Eastern Cape. We argue that our cases show how it is possible to bridge the gap between heteroglossic conceptions of language and languaging in applied linguistics, and what is conceived as legitimate language practices in the classroom. We conclude that the translanguaging and multimodal strategies in the two cases offer new pedagogical strategies for meaning-making that challenge the dominant monolingual orientation to children’s languaging in many classrooms.
... Every participant possessed a unique multilingual repertoire of languages. Walter (2008) reported that 42,000 children in a 20-year ongoing longitudinal study indicated that academic success is related to first language support. Multilingual education is an issue of basic linguistic human rights (Asgharzadeh, 2008;Hornberger & Hult, 2008). ...
Globalization requires improved communication skills for diplomacy, business, media, science, and tourism.
The problem is that monolingual students miss opportunities for cognitive and communicative development.
Outcomes of 38 higher education studies demonstrated that multilingual students outperform other students.
Minorities, immigrants, and poor students suffer the worst in monolingual education.
By comparison, Europe spends half as much money and delivers multilingual education.
The study reveals recommendations from the 18 researcher participants for improving education.
... In hindsight, according to Obanya (2002), radical approaches yielded some positive results for education: the development of consistent ideologies involving people's own languages, the enrichment of school curricula that responded to societal needs, and the development of indigenous languages in education and public life. These positive results are still apparent in Ethiopia (Heugh et al. 2007) and Eritrea (Walter 2008), which make the strongest use of indigenous national languages in education on the continent. ...
Guinea-Conakry, West Africa, was one of the only countries of sub-Saharan Africa to reject the colonial language along with colonial rule, at least in basic education. Under its first president, Sékou Touré, Guinea adopted eight major national languages as media of instruction for primary and middle school levels. Language emancipation through education was part of Touré's platform of combining a socialist economy and nationalist ideology. Unfortunately, education in national languages did not survive past Touré's administration but died with him in 1984. Since then, the entire schooling system has depended solely on French, a language that very few Guineans speak at home. Meanwhile, national languages have continued to play a role in other domains, and in current educational, linguistic and political circles there is talk of bringing these languages back into formal education. Using data gathered from various documentary sources, combined with a synthesis of our interviews and discussions with teachers, literacy facilitators, education authorities, linguists and decision makers, this paper discusses the potential for Guinean languages to be re-emancipated in official policy and national practice. We also describe the approach of one NGO to support this re-emancipation through experimental schooling in Soso, one of Guinea's three most widely spoken languages.
... In the early 1990s some 12,000 students were enrolled in this network of elite institutions, designed to provide a quality education for the children of civil servants working for EU institutions. A key feature of the ESM is that the target language is taught formally as a subject, as the object of teaching, prior to being used as a medium of instruction (Walter, 2008). In this way students are given intensive target language instruction; that is, they learn about the language before they begin learning in the language. ...
[Full access at: http://research.acer.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=aer]
... In this case, the school, typical of previously white suburban schools, use English as the language of instruction from reception year (Grade R) throughout and children follow the English as a home language curriculum (as do all children in schools where English is the language of instruction from Grade 1, regardless of their linguistic repertoires), while taking isiXhosa as a subject (First Additional Language, FAL) for a few hours during the week. For many children then, this school is experienced as a 'straight for English' or submersion (Walter 2008) context, that is children are submerged in English and expected to sink or swim. 11 Extract 2 is from observation of news time in the classroom where the teacher, Mrs West, is calling on children to speak and at the same time commenting in asides/ off-stage to the researcher: ...
This paper focuses on the lack of impact on language education of recent paradigm shifts in the study of language and society such as the recognition of the ideology of language[s] as stable, discrete or bounded entities and the reality of heteroglossic languaging and semiotic practices in everyday life. Using South Africa as a case, the paper explores the implications of heteroglossic conceptualising of language as social practice for language education through three ethnographically informed case studies of classroom discourse. I will argue that monoglossic orientations which ironically underpin both monolingual and “multilingual” approaches have wide-ranging constraining effects on how children are positioned in schooling, and on children’s participation in classrooms, resulting in a form of ‘epistemic injustice’ (Fricker, 2007).
... However, the need to make citizens feel that they belong to a particular cultural group and historical society raises numerous questions, such as what should be the language of education or which languages should be taught at school, especially in settings where citizens use more than one language in their linguistic repertoire. Various indigenous peoples around the world and minority national groups experience language-related problems in formal education, as one language is being used at school and a different one at home (Delpit & Kilgour Dowdy, 2002;Nero, 2006;Walter, 2008). In multilingual or bilingual environments such as the United States, Belgium, Switzerland, or India, stated policy (i.e., overt policy) normally differs from what actually happens at the practical level, that is, within the unstated and informal aspects of a community's linguistic practices (Schiffman, 1996). ...
This study investigates the complex interplay between national and local objectives of formal education in the bidialectal context of Cyprus. Even though the state and the Ministry of Education and Culture urge teachers to employ the standard language variety in education, the dialect is often used as a medium of interaction and even instruction during class time. Specifically, this study examines in which communicative interactions in the classroom language becomes a salient feature of the interaction and whether patterns arise as regards the factors that influence teachers' and learners' selection of one or the other language variety. Data collected from kindergarten, primary, and secondary education via class observations suggest that teachers' differing language practices are largely influenced by the subject area they teach and more often than not inconsistencies arise in connection with the state's national objectives of formal education and the school's or teacher's local objectives in the classroom.
... A key feature of the ESM is that the target language is taught formally as a subject, as the object of teaching, prior to being used as a medium of instruction (Walter, 2008). In this way students are given intensive target language instruction; that is, they learn about the language before they begin learning in the language. ...
There are good reasons for all Australian children to study a second language from an early age according to the latest Australian Education Review.
Over the past 30 years, the term “criticality” has become increasingly common in studies of educational and applied linguistics. Derived originally from the work of the Frankfurt School and widened by the linguistic turn in the writing of Habermas, the first linguistic sub-field was Critical Discourse Analysis, proposed by British scholars. In 1990, Alastair Pennycook called for critical applied linguistics, and in 2021 traced its expansion over thirty years. Given the steady deterioration of the modern world and its effects on language teaching and use, there is good reason to encourage critical approaches to educational linguistics and to seek solutions to the current crises. But continued critique without solutions in praxis is not desirable.
Reilly, C. (2019) Language and Development – Issues in Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education. Open Access Report from 'The Effect of English-only Instruction on Skill Formation and Labour Market Readiness of Young Malawians' project, funded by the Scottish Funding Council & Global Challenges Research Fund. Available at http://www.langdev.mw/downloads/Language%20and%20DevelopmentIssues%20in%20Mother%20Tongue%20Based%20Multilingual%20Education.pdf.
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This review will provide a brief, accessible overview of the academic debate about mother tongue education. The first section – Language and development – will discuss the relationship between language, the economy and sustainable development. Section two will focus on multilingual education, focusing on the benefits and challenges of implementing mother tongue-based language policies within education, highlighting case studies in particular country contexts. This document is designed to provide an introduction to key issues in this area for a broad audience.
High quality early years’ education is associated with providing a child-centred curriculum based on a knowledge of how young children learn. The global ‘schoolification epidemic’ has led to an increasing focus on prescribed curricula and presents as a serious threat to the quality of children's early years’ experiences. Findings from research in Ireland confirm this shift towards ‘schoolification’ and the association of school readiness with a child's age and the acquisition of academic skills. Revisiting Dewey's writings provides a much needed impetus for a return to child-centredness and a re-conceptualisation of early years’ education as a process of forming fundamental dispositions.
As part of a larger study on language and identity, the chapter reports on language use among a select group of Greek/English speaking bilingual children in state elementary schools in the Republic of Cyprus. Using a participatory case study approach, multiple in-depth interviews and artifacts were collected from the children and family members. The chapter describes what these simultaneous bilingual children report about how they negotiate their languages within a school system that does not actively acknowledge their bilingualism. The findings point to what can be termed a “secret space” of linguistic negotiations beyond the purview of the classroom teacher. It is within this space that the children detail their experiences of language use, negotiation, manipulation, and translanguaging (Garcia 2009). With increased globalization and immigration throughout Europe, the findings are important for what they reveal about bilingual children’s language use and needs within monolingual school systems.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the field of language education had moved from suggesting new methods to considering the implications of linguistics and in particular psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics to the task of developing proficiency in additional languages. Later developments in language policy, considering not just actual language practices and ideologies but also attempts to manage the practices and ideologies of others, provided a new focus by making clear the basic importance of family language policy and the complexity of agencies attempting to manage school language policies. Within the many communities that make up modern nations, ideologies concerning the relation between language and identity and religious beliefs have been recognized as major motivations. The realization that there are many putative managers, individuals, and agencies at all levels from family and nation and beyond (e.g., human rights, globalization) has made clear the complexity of negotiating an agreed language education policy and the difficulty of dealing with status and corpus problems. Part of the gap has been filled by the growth of a neighboring field of educational linguistics. But in spite of the growing evidence-based knowledge about language education, implementation of such obvious principles as teaching in a language the pupils understand continues to be blocked by ignorance and inertia.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the field of language education had moved from suggesting new methods to considering the implications of linguistics and in particular psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics to the task of developing proficiency in additional languages. Later developments in language policy, considering not just actual language practices and ideologies but also attempts to manage the practices and ideologies of others, provided a new focus by making clear the basic importance of family language policy and the complexity of agencies attempting to manage school language policies. Within the many communities that make up modern nations, ideologies concerning the relation between language and identity and religious beliefs have been recognized as major motivations. The realization that there are many putative managers, individuals, and agencies at all levels from family and nation and beyond (e.g., human rights, globalization) has made clear the complexity of negotiating an agreed language education policy and the difficulty of dealing with status and corpus problems. Part of the gap has been filled by the growth of a neighboring field of educational linguistics. But in spite of the growing evidence-based knowledge about language education, implementation of such obvious principles as teaching in a language the pupils understand continues to be blocked by ignorance and inertia.
As part of a larger study on language and identity, the chapter reports on language use among a select group of Greek/English speaking bilingual children in state elementary schools in the Republic of Cyprus. Using a participatory case study approach, multiple in-depth interviews and artifacts were collected from the children and family members. The chapter describes what these simultaneous bilingual children report about how they negotiate their languages within a school system that does not actively acknowledge their bilingualism. The findings point to what can be termed a “secret space” of linguistic negotiations beyond the purview of the classroom teacher. It is within this space that the children detail their experiences of language use, negotiation, manipulation, and translanguaging (Garcia 2009). With increased globalization and immigration throughout Europe, the findings are important for what they reveal about bilingual children’s language use and needs within monolingual school systems.
By the middle of the twentieth century, the field of language education had moved from suggesting new methods to considering the implications of linguistics and in particular psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics to the task of developing proficiency in additional languages. Later developments in language policy, considering not just actual language practices and ideologies but also attempts to manage the practices and ideologies of others, provided a new focus by making clear the basic importance of family language policy and the complexity of agencies attempting to manage school language policies. Within the many communities that make up modern nations, ideologies concerning relation between language and identity and religious beliefs have been recognized as major motivations. The realization that there are many putative managers, individuals, and agencies at all levels from family and nation and beyond (e.g., human rights, globalization) has made clear the complexity of negotiating an agreed language education policy and the difficulty of dealing with status and corpus problems. Part of the gap has been filled by the growth of a neighboring field of educational linguistics. But in spite of the growing evidence-based knowledge about language education, implementation of such obvious principles as teaching in a language the pupils understand continues to be blocked by ignorance and inertia.
This chapter focuses on the issue of the medium of instruction, especially mother tongue education, understood as education through the medium of an African language, for it has been at the heart of the language question in the African continent. The chapter contrasts Western and African perspectives to and notes the double standards in the debate around the issue of mother tongue education. From a Western perspective, the very concept of mother tongue education must be abandoned because it is essentialist. On the other hand, however, mother tongue education is the norm in many Western countries. Following Walter (The Handbook of Educational Linguistics. Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), as well as citing the existence of strong empirical evidence supporting mother tongue education, the chapter argues that the debate around mother tongue education “should not be subordinated to issues of political sensitivity, technical difficulties, economic limitations, societal tensions, and the established practice and inertia of national educational systems.” Rather, applied linguists, in Africa in particular, have a responsibility to refocus the debate, with the intent of exploring how African mother tongues and former colonial languages can coexist productively in the continent’s educational systems, as the proposed Prestige Planning (see Chap. 7) framework suggests.
This chapter considers colonial language ideologies in Africa. It starts with a review of theoretical approaches to colonial language ideologies. Next, it discusses the roots and implementation of these ideologies, and investigates how colonial authorities, particularly the Belgians, British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, responded to the language question in the African territories they conquered. In conclusion, this chapter considers the legacy of colonial language ideologies in Africa and the next chapter discusses how that legacy continues to impact language policy decision-making in postcolonial Africa.
This chapter explores how educational approaches in low-income multilingual countries are pervaded by a monolingual habitus, or set of assumptions built on the fundamental myth of uniformity of language and culture. This habitus is evidenced in transitional bilingual approaches and unrealistic expectations for native-like proficiency in second or foreign languages. Northern biases have made research methodologies imperfectly suited to multilingual settings with dominant languages other than English. Fortunately, there are new terms, approaches and research that support a multilingual habitus more appropriate to linguistically diverse contexts of schooling and have great liberatory, transformative potential.
This report summarises, lists and discusses the reading, interviews and observations conducted since the commencement of the project on 1 December 2012 and contains the overall conceptualisation for the project and a work plan of future activities. The work plan involves a series of intervention measures for 2013 and suggestions for further research.
This chapter provides commentary on the other contributions to the volume. In addition, reflections are offered about future
directions and prospects for the field of educational linguistics. It is suggested that effective language educational management
must go beyond facts and data in order to communicate effectively to policymakers and the general public the importance of
multilingual education.
In discussions of Africa in the global North, the term ‘development’ is one of the most often used—though its meaning can be remarkably difficult to pin down. The sustainability of development processes and outcomes is also of current concern in development discourse. If sustainable development can be described in terms of ongoing, enhanced human well-being as well as continued national economic growth, then it requires the full participation of the target community. Development that is ‘done to’ people has little chance of sustainability.The central argument of this paper is that sustainable development, defined as many experts are defining it today, is not possible without attention to questions of language choice and literacy ability. Indeed, experts have recognized that the learning contexts (both formal and nonformal) needed for sustained development in the two-thirds world are currently quite inadequate to the task. Given this fact, the crucial role of language and literacy in truly sustainable development deserves careful attention.In this paper the specific links between language, development and literacy are explored. Examples from across sub-Saharan Africa are then given regarding the impact that is possible when local-language literacy is made part of the broader development picture.
Bilingual education is the use of the native tongue to instruct limited English-speaking children. The authors read studies of bilingual education from the earliest period of this literature to the most recent. Of the 300 program evaluations read, only 72 (25%) were methodologically acceptable - that is, they had a treatment and control group and a statistical control for pre-treatment differences where groups were not randomly assigned. Virtually all of the studies in the United States were of elementary or junior-high school students and Spanish speakers. The few studies conducted outside the United States were almost all in Canada. The research evidence indicates that, on standardized achievement tests, transitional bilingual education (TBE) is better than regular classroom instruction in only 22% of the methodologically acceptable studies when the outcome is reading, 7% of the studies when the outcome is language, and 9% of the studies when the outcome is math. TBE is never better than structured immersion, a special program for limited English proficient children where the children are in a self-contained classroom composed solely of English learners, but the instruction is in English at a pace they can understand. Thus, the research evidence does not slipport transitional bilingual education as a superior form of instruction for limited English proficient children.
This report provides information designed to encourage those working in international education to directly confront "language problems" by considering the effectiveness and feasibility of initial education in the mother tongue or local language. It serves as a bridge between applied linguistics and developmental education, exploring educational limitations arising from language barriers and innovative ways in which these limitations have been addressed. It describes successful and innovative programs that multilingual countries have implemented to expand educational opportunity, especially for underserved groups, clarifying replication of these programs in other countries and emphasizing the need for leadership on language issues. Chapter 1 reviews the international context for language in education and the importance of initial education in the mother tongue. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss promising and innovative approaches in 13 countries, describing necessary foundation work and external support. Chapter 4 outlines opportunities for assistance, emphasizing the importance of global leadership on language issues. Chapter 5 offers observations on the relationships between language and school access, equity, and quality and the importance of making innovative education programs the norm in multilingual countries. Appendixes contain summaries of the 13 innovative programs and an annotated list of key organizations. (Contains 111 references.) (SM)
This book presents an account of the bilingual educational program near Montreal, Canada, referred to as the St. Lambert Experiment. It contains the following chapters: (1) Introduction, (2) The Research Plan and Procedures, (3) The Standings of the Pilot Classes at the End of Grade I, (4) The Follow-Up Classes at the End of Grade I, (5) The Pilot and Follow-Up Classes at Grade II, (6) The Pilot and Follow-Up Classes at Grade III, (7) The Pilot Class at Grade IV, (8) The Program's Effect on Pupils' Attitudes, (9) Pupils' Views of the Program, and (10) The Bilingual Education of Children In Perspective. The appendixes discuss the role of parents and present descriptions of the classes in action. Included are references and an index. (SK)
this document. Of course, all findings and opinions are ours; no endorsement by the U.S. Department of Education, WESTAT, WCER, or the HDP should be inferred. Anne Turnbaugh Lockwood and Walter G. Secada Madison, Wisconsin January, 1999 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One
California State Department of Education (ed.), Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework
- James Cummins
Education in Mother Tongue: The Ife Primary Education Research Project (1970–1978)
- Aliu Fafunwa
- Macauley Babtunde
- I. Juliet
- J. A. Sokoya Funnso
Indian Education in the Chiapas Highlands
- Nancy Modiano
Language and Life: Essays in Memory of Kenneth L. Pike
- Stephen L. Walter
Wasted Opportunities: When Schools Fail
- Edward B. Fiske
Eritrea National Reading Survey
- Stephen L. Walter
- Patricia M. Davis
Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Policies for Adjustment, Revitalization, and Expansion
- Stephen L. Walter
- Ronald Morren