Flexible Multilingual Education

Putting Children's Needs First

Jean-Jacques Weber

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783092017
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book examines the benefits of multilingual education that puts children's needs and interests above the individual languages involved. It advocates flexible multilingual education, which builds upon children's actual home resources and provides access to both the local and global languages that students need for their educational and professional success. It argues that, as more and more children grow up multilingually in our globalised world, there is a need for more nuanced multilingual solutions in language-in-education policies. The case studies reveal that flexible multilingual education – rather than mother tongue education – is the most promising way of moving towards the elusive goal of educational equity in today's world of globalisation, migration and superdiversity.

1Introduction

The important point, in the context of this book, is not so much whether or not the children’s heritage and home background can be sustained by the school, but rather that children may be assisted to school success without downgrading their background and language

Edwards, 1989: 135

In line with the above quotation, this book adopts a perspective on multilingual education, which consistently puts children’s needs first rather than languages. One consequence of this reorientation will be the transcending of arguments for or against a particular language and looking more holistically at what the resources are that children in a specific situation need for their educational and later professional success. As more and more children grow up multilingual in our globalized world, there is a need for more nuanced multilingual solutions in language-in-education policies.

This book therefore advocates flexible (rather than fixed) multilingual systems of education that build on children’s actual home linguistic resources. It discusses the use of non-standard varieties in education, as well as the important issue of students’ access to opportunities and resources. It includes numerous case studies from around the world: from the USA to Hong Kong, contrasting the highly restrictive language-in-education policies in parts of the USA (especially Arizona) with the move towards a more flexible multilingual system of education in Hong Kong; from Singapore to South Africa, exploring how these states deal with the challenge of building on children’s repertoires which are often multilingual and heterogeneous (and do not consist of just one ‘mother tongue’); from Luxembourg to three Autonomous Communities of Spain (Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia), focusing in particular on the differential access to English provided for migrant students in their multilingual education systems.

The argument made in this book is that flexible multilingual education is best for children, whereas fixed multilingual education based upon a discourse of ethnolinguistic essentialism confronts particular groups of students with obstacles similar to those found in monolingual education. Hence, language-in-education policies need to build upon all the resources in children’s linguistic repertoires, and not just on a narrow range of standard varieties that are ascribed to them on the basis of their perceived ethnicity. The many case studies in the book reveal that this is the most promising approach towards the elusive goal of educational equity in our late modern age of globalization, migration and superdiversity (Vertovec, 2007).

In this introductory chapter, I first contrast the traditional approach to the study of bi- or multilingual education with the more innovative approach taken here. Next, I explain the difference between fixed and flexible multilingual education, and finally I show that many existing mother tongue and other multilingual education programmes are not flexible enough in the sense that they are informed by the assumptions of what can be referred to as the ‘monolingual mindset’ (Clyne, 2008).

Different Models of Bi- and Multilingual Education

A traditional approach to the study of bi- and multilingual education has been to distinguish between different models (see e.g. Baker, 2006, 2007). Bi- and multilingual education is often defined as involving the use of two or more media of instruction, and it is possible to differentiate between ‘strong’ or additive and ‘weak’ or subtractive programmes. While the latter aim at transitioning minority language students as quickly as possible from their minority language to the dominant language in a society, the former aim at developing both minority and majority languages as a way of fostering bi-/multilingualism and bi- or multiliteracies in students. These strong forms of bi-/multilingual education include heritage language education, dual language education (as found, for example, in the USA) and immersion education (e.g. in Canada).

One thing that may strike the reader here is that all the forms of strong bi-/multilingual education that Baker discusses are informed by an ideology of (parallel) monolingualism, in which languages are strictly compartmentalized (for further discussion, see the section ‘Fixed vs. Flexible Multilingual Education’). In the typical Canadian immersion programmes, anglophone students are immersed – wholly or partly – in French, with the aim of developing in them a proficiency in both French and their ‘mother tongue’ (English). The same applies to some heritage language programmes such as Māori-medium education in New Zealand, though nowadays many of these programmes have shifted from an exclusive focus on the heritage language and reserve an increasingly important place in the curriculum for the study of academic English (see Chapter 3). In the typical dual language programmes in the USA (usually Spanish–English), Latino and Anglo-American students are taught about half their subjects through the minority language and the other half through the majority language (though different weightings are possible, too), with the aim of developing bilingualism and biliteracy in both language majority and minority students (see Chapter 5).

However, Baker (2007: 132) points out that there is variation within each model and that specific schools often apply a mixture of these models, as teachers endeavour to deal pragmatically with the challenge of implementing the model in their particular school environment. It is clear that such a pragmatic and flexible approach is highly desirable; thus, for instance, teachers have to be ready to adapt the model to a changing school population, by, for instance, increasing or decreasing the number of subjects taught through one or other language, depending on students’ needs and interests. Or there may be a need to break through a language separation approach by flexibly switching between varieties or languages as a way of scaffolding students’ learning. As a result, the boundaries between models become porous, and the gap between models and practices increases, so that the whole system of classification becomes less useful. A more promising approach may be to focus instead on the key principles underlying multilingual education.

Key Principles Underlying Multilingual Education

A principle-based approach to multilingual education has been adopted for instance by de Jong (2011), who identifies the following criteria as making multilingual education effective for as many students as possible, and in fact as being important in the schooling of all children:

• striving for educational equity
• structuring for integration
• affirming identities
• promoting additive bi-/multilingualism

Educational equity is the ultimate goal of all flexible multilingual education and can be defined as ‘providing high-quality education and learning opportunities for students of different backgrounds’ (van Avermaet et al., 2011: 1). It is based on the assumption that if there is an achievement gap between different groups of students, it is due not to the students themselves, but to inequities in the education system. De Jong’s second principle, ‘structuring for integration’ is closely related to her first principle in its concern with desegregation, inclusion and equality of status, and hence could easily be included under the overarching equity principle. The third principle, affirming students’ linguistic and cultural identities, involves building on all their resources, including non-standard, vernacular varieties. Finally, the promotion of additive bi- or multilingualism highlights the importance of the issue of access: in today’s increasingly multilingual world, students need access to both minority and majority languages for all sorts of reasons, from identity-based ones to instrumental ones concerned with social mobility. Hence, looking at languages as being in conflict, and one language only being able to thrive at the expense of another, is not a very helpful or productive perspective in this respect. What is needed is a radical shift from an either-or to a both-and logic in thinking about languages and education (cf. Cummins, 2000: 28).

This book is primarily concerned with the key issues of building on children’s linguistic resources and providing them with high-quality access to all the linguistic resources they need for educational and professional success. These major concerns inevitably put medium of instruction policies at the centre of our investigations, for the obvious reason that, as Tollefson and Tsui point out,

medium of instruction policy determines which social and linguistic groups have access to political and economic opportunities, and which groups are disenfranchised. It is therefore a key means of power (re)distribution and social (re)construction. (Tollefson & Tsui, 2004: 2)

In the upcoming chapters, I therefore explore the medium of instruction debates in numerous multilingual countries around the world, from Singapore via South Africa to Hong Kong and others. What is striking are the great differences in the medium of instruction debates in these countries. To give just a few examples, in Singapore the medium of instruction is English, which is actually a second language for many of the students, whereas the official mother tongue is taught as a subject and only minimally used as a medium of instruction. Because of the importance of English in the Singaporean education system, a large part of the medium of instruction debates has been concerned with the role to be played by the nativized variety of English, namely, Singapore English or Singlish. In many South African schools, the medium of instruction is a local African language in the initial stages of education, but usually there is a switch to English halfway through primary school. Here, the debates are primarily concerned with whether it would be better to use the indigenous languages or English as the medium of instruction throughout primary education. In Hong Kong, on the other hand, Cantonese is the most usual medium of instruction in primary school, and the debate is largely focused on whether to use Cantonese or English in secondary education. Moreover, there is a further debate about whether Cantonese should be gradually replaced by Putonghua as the medium of instruction from primary education upwards, now that Hong Kong has become a part of the People’s Republic of China.

All these and many other issues will be analysed in depth in the chapters that follow. But we can already note here that most of these medium of instruction debates are framed in terms of an either-or logic: Singlish or standard English, English or an indigenous South African language, Cantonese or English, Cantonese or Putonghua. The challenge will be to rethink these debates in terms of a radically different both-and logic. Finally, I also need to point out that, because of its focus on language in education, this book does not take into account other important social factors that influence the quality of education, such as educational infrastructures, the financial resources of schools, the availability and quality of teachers and of teaching materials, parents’ involvement in their children’s schooling or the families’ social milieu.

Fixed vs Flexible Multilingual Education

In this book, I contrast fixed and flexible multilingual education systems, building on similar distinctions that have been made between separate and flexible multilingualism or homoglossic and heteroglossic multilingualism (Blackledge & Creese, 2010; García, 2009; Weber & Horner, 2012a). Fixed multilingual education is informed by a monolingual mindset or habitus (Clyne, 2008; Gogolin, 1994), and is often referred to in the literature as ‘double’, ‘plural’ or ‘parallel’ monolingualism (Heller, 2006; Otsuji & Pennycook, 2011). This is because in this conception languages are seen as being discrete, bounded entities. Monolingualism is looked upon as the norm, which can be expanded by learning one or several more of these entities (‘languages’), which in this way are perceived as being easily countable; hence, the common definition of bi- or multilingualism as the ability to use two or more languages in communication.

Many of the discourses that circulate widely in contemporary society rely upon these basic and apparently commonsensical assumptions of the monolingual mindset. Let me just mention two such discourses here: first, the discourse of language endangerment (Duchêne & Heller, 2007), which needs to identify and name a particular ‘language’, so that it can then be split off from other ‘languages’ on what is usually a linguistic continuum and, as a separate and discrete entity, it can then be perceived as being in need of revitalization. At times, the motivation behind this can be an attempt to preserve the alleged ‘purity’ of the language and keep it from changing through contact with other languages in the sociolinguistic environment. Another widespread discourse is the discourse of ethnolinguistic essentialism, which links ethnicity with language. It is based upon such language ideologies as the one nation–one language ideology and the mother tongue ideology, with each human being assumed to have one and only one mother tongue as the norm.

Mother tongue education often relies upon one or both of these discourses and therefore constitutes a rather fixed type of multilingual education. It is usually concerned with, and committed to, the maintenance and revitalization of a particular endangered language. However, as we will see in the following section and in later chapters, it tends to be focused on the standard variety of students’ assumed mother tongue and, in the process, frequently overlooks non-standard varieties; in the case of indigenous minority languages, it also frequently ignores the needs of particular groups of students in society, such as migrant students.

The multilingual mindset or habitus, on the other hand, relies upon very different assumptions. It problematizes the distinction between ‘languages’ and ‘dialects’, arguing that the distinction is of a political rather than a linguistic nature. It therefore takes a resource-based rather than a language-based view of multilingualism: all the linguistic resources in a person’s repertoire, whether ‘languages’, ‘dialects’, registers, styles or accents are taken into account, at whatever level of proficiency she or he masters them (see Blommaert, 2010: 102). This implies that multilingualism rather than monolingualism is the norm; indeed, it is hard to imagine somebody who does not master, at least to some extent, more than one linguistic variety or register. Moreover, people’s linguistic repertoires are highly dynamic in that they constantly have new linguistic experiences. In this way, the multilingual mindset puts language variation, contact and change at the centre of its preoccupations.

Flexible multilingual education is informed by the assumptions of the multilingual mindset. It builds on students’ home linguistic resources (see Chapter 2), including non-standard varieties such as the urban vernaculars that are emerging in the metropolitan areas of our globalizing world. It provides high-quality access to both local, indigenous languages and global languages such as English, and hence access to the best possible educational opportunities for all children, including migrant students (see Chapter 3). Chapter 4 draws together these two primary concerns in order to further illustrate and define the nature of flexible multilingual education. These chapters are followed by extended case studies of different countries around the world which have multilingual education systems that, as we will see, range from highly fixed to more flexible.

Before we proceed, however, there is a need for a word of caution. While this book is in line with similar approaches advocating hybridity or translanguaging, it goes beyond many of them in its endeavour to set up an ethical and responsible theory of flexible multilingual education. Indeed, these approaches are often purely ‘celebratory’ and hence limited, in that they ‘fail to address the issues underlying educational underachievement’ (Edwards & Redfern, 1992: 51). Therefore, this book goes beyond a mere celebration of translanguaging and is fully aware of the dangers of romanticizing such practices because they can easily become ‘socially disadvantageous’ for the very children whom our proposals are most intended to help (Stroud & Wee, 2012: 106; see also the discussion in Chapter 7).

Mother Tongue Education or Flexible Multilingual Education

In this book, I argue that mother tongue education needs to be rethought and reoriented in the direction of a more flexible multilingual education. Instead of relying upon the problematic concept of mother tongue, it is more important to build on students’ actual linguistic resources in a positive and additive way. With more and more children growing up multilingual in today’s globalized world, their actual linguistic resources often cannot be reduced to a single mother tongue. Therefore, this book advocates openness to all varieties, including non-standard and vernacular varieties, and insists upon the importance of access to both minority and majority, local and global languages. It argues against the common assumption that mother tongue education is automatically and necessarily what is best for students, and calls for more flexible multilingual solutions in language-in-education policies.

Because of its focus on mother tongue, mother tongue education almost inevitably simplifies the linguistic reality of the actors concerned. Let us take heritage language education as an example. First, we note that often this is not mother tongue education in any literal sense, as the heritage language (e.g. the Māori language in New Zealand) may not be the home language but a second or foreign language for many children. Yet, as we will see in Chapter 3, Māori-medium bilingual education achieves highly positive results even for those children who have to learn Māori as a second or foreign language. Such examples of heritage language education show that students can learn successfully through a second or foreign language as long as that language is present at least to some extent in their out-of-school environment.

However, both in mother tongue and heritage language education, students are sometimes taught the standard variety of what is assumed to be their mother tongue, even though this particular variety may not be present in their out-of-school environment. An example of this is Blackl...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• References
• Author Index
• Subject Index