Global Perspectives on Language Education Policies

JoAnn (Jodi) Crandall, Kathleen M. Bailey, JoAnn (Jodi) Crandall, Kathleen M. Bailey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351610001
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Presenting research on language policy and planning, with a special focus on educational contexts in which English plays a role, this book brings readers up-to-date on the latest developments in research, theory, and practice in a rapidly changing field. The diversity of authors, research settings, and related topics offers a sample of empirical studies across multiple language teaching and university contexts. The fifth volume in the Global Research on Teaching and Learning English series, it features access to both new and previously unpublished research in chapters written by TIRF Doctoral Dissertation Grant awardees and invited chapters by respected scholars in the field.

1

Introduction

JoAnn (Jodi) Crandall and Kathleen M. Bailey

This collection reports on language education policy research by 14 TIRF Doctoral Dissertation Grantees and the first two winners of the TIRF James E. Alatis Prize for Research on Language Policy and Planning in Educational Contexts. Language education policy, also variously referred to as educational language policy (Cooper, Shohamy, & Walters, 2001) or language-in-education policy (Plüddemann, 2015), involves policy decisions that can be realized through educational practices regarding the following:

• promotion of languages/varieties as mediums of instruction, including in bilingual/multilingual contexts;
• acquisition of additional (often official or international) languages;
• choice of languages for initial literacy and for teaching specific subjects such as science or technology;
• support for minority or indigenous/community languages;
• recognition of the linguistic resources of plurilingual individuals (Council of Europe, 2007); and
• decisions for which languages and skills are assessed.

Language education policy involves both top-down and bottom-up (Hornberger, 1997) planning and processes, also referred to by Coulmas (2005) as macro- and micro-choices. Macro-choices involve the “allocation of languages and varieties, the promotion of languages for education, and managing patterns of multilingualism,” whereas micro-choices involve “daily decisions about classroom language use, such as dealing with gendered speech, dialects, and code-switching” (Coulmas, 2005, p. 6; Cf: Clyne, 2001 on micro-policy as a barometer of change and Baldauf, 2006 on the importance of micro-language planning in ecological contexts). Language policy is also developed and implemented at the meso-level—that is, by institutions, programs, etc.

Ricento and Hornberger (1996) use the metaphor of an onion to describe the many layers of language education policy and the ways in which agents, levels, and processes “interact with each other” (p. 402). The outer layer is where official policy documents, laws, or regulations are created and promoted by national and supranational agencies. Such official policy statements can even be administered by consulates or embassies abroad. (See, for example, Yokoyama, this volume, on the administration of the Japanese English Teacher program.)

These laws or official policy documents are then “interpreted and modified” (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996, p. 409) in an array of smaller institutions (such as schools, universities, businesses, and community organizations, as well as the media) by diverse individuals, who have their own experiences, perspectives, and goals. In each of these contexts, institutions and individuals may adapt, transform, ignore, or reject the policy. In the case of language education planning and policy, schools and universities play a primary institutional role, determining the curriculum or texts, deciding on professional development initiatives, etc., although the media also have an important role (as Stephens, this volume, makes clear).

At the innermost layer are the teachers, who are central to “educational and social change and institutional transformation” (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996, p. 417) within their local contexts. They are “the heart of language policy” (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996, p. 417). Teachers enact the curriculum and through their practice ignore, resist, or adapt policy. For example, they may disregard the textbooks provided by a program or mandated by state policy and implement the practices they believe will be more effective with their learners, such as the use of the Language Experience Approach by a teacher of refugee women in the US (Pettitt, this volume), or adapt texts and provide additional resources, as illustrated by Vietnamese teachers attempting to implement communicative teaching with young learners (Le, this volume). In some cases, teachers may not even be aware that the policy exists, as in the case of a policy governing the use of Jamaican Creole in education (Nero, this volume).

Menken and García (2010) describe a dynamic language education policy in which the onion is “stirred” by numerous stakeholders (with a focus on teachers and teacher agency), rather than a bottom-up set of linear processes and practices. Teachers are more than interpreters of policy; they are active policy agents creating policy through their decisions and their practices (García & Menken, 2010). And educational policies are assessed in their importance by learners, as evidenced by the discussion of the relative importance of Chinese as a global economic language in Nepal (Sharma, this volume).

Responses to national policy are not always compliant, for a number of possible reasons. For example, whereas mother-tongue literacy may be permissible or even mandated, parents may not want the school to take time away from the study or use of mediums of instruction which are perceived to be more powerful. In other cases, curricula, materials, or teachers who can teach through that language may not be available (Newman, this volume; Shohamy, 2006). The local language may be perceived as not adequately developed to use as a medium of instruction, as in the case of Tetun in Timor-Leste (Newman, this volume). In some situations, the language of the textbook may differ substantially from the language spoken by both teachers and learners, as in the case of Pashto in rural Pakistan (Khan, this volume). An additional challenge to policy is the lack of mandated competence or availability of professional development opportunities to address issues related to language by mainstream or subject matter teachers, as in the case of science teachers with English learners in the US (Braden & Christison, this volume); to communication by international teaching assistants in U.S. universities and their students (Subtirelu, this volume); or to implementing plurilingual policies in language classes (see Galante, on English as a foreign language classes, this volume). Conflicting policies also present a problem, such as the qualifications expected of Assistant Language Teachers in Japan (Yokoyama, this volume).

Globalization and internationalization policies at universities have led to questions of medium of instruction. In many contexts, the choice is English (Park & Pawan, 2016; Kling, 2016), although as Okuda (this volume) discusses, the choice can be Japanese in Japan. Additional to the choice of language is the choice of cultures which are represented or presented through the language (for example, cultures other than American and British, etc., in English as a foreign language class; see Galante, this volume). Internationalization efforts may also be part of an effort to promote changes in language teaching approaches, e.g., to focus on communicative competence through a communicative approach or to enhance understanding of a country and culture by international students, both of which are discussed by Okuda (this volume).

Language policy may also be explicit or implicit. For example, the United States has no official language, although a majority of individual states in the US have explicit language policies which designate English as the official language. However, New Mexico and Hawai’i have two official languages, as does the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico (Wiley, 2000).

As it moves from layer to layer, policy is “interpreted and modified” (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996, p. 409; Cf: García & Menken, 2010). Wiley and García (2016) have called for greater attention to the role of local agents (Cf: language planning arbiters, Johnson & Johnson, 2015) in policy implementation. (See Hamman, this volume, on the role of teachers, administrators, board members, and the community in implementing a district’s first dual language immersion program in Wisconsin.) As Hornberger and Johnson (2007) indicate, policy documents “are nothing without the human agents who act as interpretive conduits between the language policy levels” (p. 258). Indeed, as Menken and García (2010) note, “At each level of an educational system, from the national ministry or department of education to the classroom, language education policies are interpreted, negotiated, and ultimately (re)constructed in the process of implementation” (p. 1).

But some language education policy is invisible. Families (and communities) may have a direct or indirect impact on language-in-education policy in their decisions of which language(s) to use at home, which language(s) to support in the education of their children, and which language(s) can best serve their children’s and their family’s social status. (See Curdt-Christiansen, 2009; King & Fogle, 2013; see as well the discussion of immigrant students’ perspectives on language use in Wang, this volume.) Parental practices and socioeconomic realities also play a part in language policy. For instance, as Darvin (this volume) indicates, considering youth as digital natives or digital immigrants ignores the diverse ways in which youth use technology and the implications thereof for educational policy.

Identity also plays a powerful (although sometimes invisible) role in educational language policy, especially at the level of teachers and learners. When that policy changes, those who were governed by previous policies may find that they no longer meet the expectations or requirements of the current policy, although they may agree with its intent. See, for example, the relationships between identity and Guarani in Paraguay (Mortimer, this volume). As Johnson and Johnson (2015) make clear, language policy has a great deal to do with issues of power, prejudice, and identity.

Perspectives on language policy range from what Ruiz (1984) has referred to as language as a problem, as a resource, or as a right. Examples of these orientations or attitudes toward language policy or practices can all be found in the chapters in this collection.

Part 1: The Teacher as Language Planner and Policy Maker

Part 1 of this collection focuses on ways in which teachers, although they are “non-authorized policy actors,” become “de facto language planner[s] and policy maker[s]” (McCarty, 2011, p. 15). In the four studies in this part, teachers develop educational language policy at the micro or local or bottom-up level, exercising agency in their choice of language, activities, or materials. Sometimes teachers make these choices in response to written policies, sometimes in the absence of these policies (e.g., Pettitt, this volume).

Most of the studies on teacher agency have focused on tertiary (especially university) contexts. (See, e.g., Hamid, Zhu, & Baldauf, 2014; Zacharias, 2013.) That observation makes the first two chapters in this part particularly important because they report on the ways in which primary teachers in two contexts (Pakistan and Vietnam) responded to changes in language education policy.

Aziz Khan’s chapter, “Whither Mother Tongue (in) Education?: An Ethnographic Study of Language Policy in Rural Primary Schools in Pakistan,” explores how two teachers “viewed and put into practice the recently introduced language-in-education policy of using the learners’ mother tongue [Pashto] as the medium of instruction” (Khan, this volume, p. 23). Although the choice of medium of instruction was left to the provinces, the policy recommended the “teaching [of]English (the only official language), Urdu (the only national language), and one regional language as subjects” in primary schools, although Khan notes that the regional languages were “largely ignored” (this volume, p. 24). However, in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the majority of the population speaks Pashto, the regional language was reintroduced as a compulsory subject and even used as a medium of instruction in some schools. In his ethnographic and narrative study, Khan sought the perspectives of two rural primary teachers in a Pashto-medium government school in a small village, where English, Urdu, and Pashto were all taught, but with the textbooks for English and Urdu written in Pashto. Khan found that whereas the teachers expressed “great love and pride for their mother tongue,” “they doubt[ed] its instrumental value” (Khan, this volume, p. 27). Moreover, the teachers believed that Pashto didn’t need to be taught because their students all knew Pashto. They believed that time would be better spent teaching in Urdu or English. As Khan concludes, “Macro-level policy decisions regarding the medium of instruction had little relevance to how the teachers actually employed languages for teaching and learning at the micro-level in their rural primary schools” (Khan, this volume, p. 30), partially because of lack of planning for implementing the policy. It was, in the words of Pearson (2014), “a policy without a plan” (p. 51).

Duc Manh Le’s chapter, “Agentic Responses to Communicative Language Teaching in Language Policy: An Example of Vietnamese English Primary Teachers,” also focuses on teacher agency by primary school teachers in response to a new policy. In this case, it was a policy that “mandates a communicative language teaching approach” (Le, this volume, p. 36) and makes communicative competence the goal of English language learning. It also lowers the starting age for English from Grade 6 to Grade 3. Le interviewed six Vietnamese primary school teachers over a four-month period during their attempts to implement the policy and found they faced a number of difficulties: “insufficient professional support,” i.e., “lack of sufficient professional training on how to teach communicatively” (this volume, p. 37); “overloaded and inappropriate teaching contents” (this volume, p. 38); “limited teaching resources” (this volume, p. 39); and “constrained language classroom settings” (this volume, p. 40). However, there were a number of ways in which teachers creatively compensated for these difficulties: by pursuing their own professional development, by relying on their professional knowledge of effective teaching practice in adapting the mandated textbook, by finding ways of engaging children in pairs or groups within their small spaces, and even by buying needed supplementary resources themselves. As Le concludes, these teachers, rather than being “passive policy recipients or teaching technicians” (Le, this volume, p. 41), “had the capacity to act as agents” (Le, this volume, p. 41).

Angelica Galante’s chapter, “Examining Brazilian Foreign Language Policy and Its Application in an EFL University Program: Teacher Perspectives on Plurilingualism,” explores “the extent to which linguistic and cultural diversity represented in Brazilian foreign language policies aligns with the concept of plurilingualism” (Galante, this volume, p. 47) as expressed in the Common European Framework of Reference (Council of Europe, 2001, 2007). Plurilingualism usually refers to “the repertoire of varieties of language which many individuals use … [including] ‘first language’ and any number of other languages and varieties” (King, 2017, p. 6, drawing on work by the Council of Europe, 2007). When applied to language teaching, as Galante explains, it is “an approach to teaching languages that harnesses the use of students’ knowledge of other languages, dialects, and cultures” (Galante, this volume, p. 47). The eight university EFL teachers in her study in Brasilia believed the inclusion of linguistic and cultural diversity topics was important, but three of them placed particular emphasis on American and British cultures, although one noted the importance of varieties other than “English from the United States or French from France” (Galante, this volume, p. 51). The teachers identified three benefits of including knowledge of other cultures and languages in the EFL classroom: “(1) connections among languages and cultures, facilitating the learning of new ones; (2) open-mindedness and respect toward other languages and cultures, and (3) development of critical global citizens” (Galante, this volume, p. 51). They also identified a number of challenges, including limited time for teaching English, limited knowledge about other languages and cultures by teachers and students, and limited focus on other cultures in the text, requiring teachers to do extra preparation to address diversity.

Nicole Pettitt’s chapter, “Refugee Women in the United States Writing Themselves Into New Community Spaces,” reports on part of a larger ethnographic study (Pettitt, 2017) of a family literacy program in the southeastern United States. It explicates one teacher’s decision to use the Language Experience Approach (LEA), rather than adhering to the funder-provided textbook in a beginning adult ESOL (English for speakers of other languages) class. This program enrolled refugee women and their children (ages 0–5), with the goals of “preparing children for kindergarten and making ESOL available to women who needed childcare in order to attend” (Pettitt, this volume, p. 57). LEA is a participatory literacy approach (Freire, 1970; Shor & Freire, 1987; Spener, 1992) in which students’ discussions about community or home events (Landis, Umolu, & Mancha, 2010)—often related to whole class experiences—serve as the basis for the development of reading (and writing) activities and materials. In this approach, the teacher serves as both prompter and scribe, eliciting information from the learners and in the process creating a text that they then copy and use for multiple learning activities. Pettitt describes several patterns of valued practice in this teacher’s class, including the use of community as a “learning (con)text” (Pettitt, this volume, p. 63) and the importance of “learner voice” in producing the classroom text (Pettitt, this volume, p. 63). The author further notes that although the focus of the class was on learning English, the teacher also encouraged the students to use their own language and literacy repertoires (an example of plurilingualism). For these refugee women, the family literacy class provided a place where their experiences, thoughts, and languages were valued.

What these four chapters have in common is a focus on teacher agency: on the multiple ways in which teachers in their classroom practices and curricula reject or adapt language policies developed and promulgated by authorities who may have limited understanding of the community and classroom contexts in which the policies are expected to be implemented. The teachers relied on their knowledge of the local context and their learne...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1 The Teacher as Language Planner and Policy Maker
• Part 2 Adoption or Adaptation of Educational Language Policies by/in Institutions
• Part 3 Perspectives of Diverse Stakeholders on Educational Language Policy and Planning
• Part 4 Identity and Individual and “Invisible” Language Policy and Planning
• About the Contributors
• Index