29.3505, FYI: Multilingual Learning in Low-resource Contexts

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LINGUIST List: Vol-29-3505. Tue Sep 11 2018. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 29.3505, FYI: Multilingual Learning in Low-resource Contexts

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Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2018 21:25:20
From: Elizabeth Erling [elizabeth.erling at uni-graz.at]
Subject: Multilingual Learning in Low-resource Contexts

 
Proposal for an edited volume in the New Routledge Series on Language and
Content Integrated Teaching & Plurilingual Education
Series Editors: Prof Angel M. Y. Lin and Prof Christiane Dalton-Puffer

Multilingual Learning in Low-Resource Contexts: Opportunities and Obstacles

Edited by Elizabeth J. Erling and John Clegg

Rationale for volume:

It is widely recognised that access to quality education is imperative for
learning in general, but also for community cohesion, participation in
society, improved access to health, national skills development and,the growth
of the economy (Coleman, 2010; Hanuschek & Woessman, 2008; Williams, 2014).
The importance of language, however, has often been overlooked in global
initiatives to improve education. Education for All (EFA), for example, a
UNESCO-led global movement started in 2000 aimed to make quality basic
education accessible to all children and significantly reduce illiteracy.
Initiatives undertaken within this movement prioritised increasing access to
education, but in doing so were criticised for neglecting to focus on teaching
and learning and the role of language therein (Alexander, 2015; Ferguson,
2013; Romaine, 2013). Accordingly, there has been increasing recognition of
the role of language in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a
set of global targets to be achieved by 2030. Language is particularly central
to achieving SDG 4, the stand-alone education goal, which states the intention
to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong
learning opportunities for all” (SDGs, 2015). In 2016, UNESCO released a
Policy Paper entitled ‘If you don’t understand, how can you learn?’, arguing
that quality education is dependent on the delivery of education in a language
that students’ speak at home and in their communities. The report highlights
that hundreds of millions of school children (as much as 40% of the global
population) do not have access to education in a language they understand
(UNESCO, 2016). The significance of this statistic in terms of limiting
students’ abilities to develop foundations for learning is only now starting
to gain widespread recognition. Increasingly research confirms that lack of
access to the official medium of instruction of education is a strong
predictor for educational failure, contributing to reduced classroom
participation, exclusion from education and school dropout (Heugh, 2009;
Pflepsen, 2015; Pinnock, 2009; Trudell, 2016). 
 
It may seem difficult to understand the lack of recognition of the importance
of language in achieving quality of education when mother tongue education has
long been promoted for early schooling by organisations like UNESCO (1953,
2003, 2008). This recommendation is in line with educational research that has
repeatedly found that the prolonged use of children’s home languages in early
schooling is critical for cognitive development (e.g. Cummins, 2000; Kosonen,
2005) and can enhance a later switch to bilingual and indeed monolingual
L2-medium education (Alidou et al., 2006; Alidou & Brock-Utne, 2011; Heugh et
al., 2007; Ouane & Glanz, 2011; Trudell, 2016). Use of students’ home and
community languages as the medium of instruction has been found to be a good
predictor of achievement (Ouane & Glanz, 2011; Smith, 2011; Smits, Huisman, &
Kruijff, 2008; Trudell, 2016). There is also widespread recognition of the
centrality of the quality of classroom interaction in achieving educational
quality, and the role of local language in promoting interaction (Alexander,
2008; Pinnock, 2009; Tikly & Barrett, 2011). 
 
Indeed, policies have been put in place in many low and middle income
countries that promote the use of students’ “mother tongues” in the early
years and global languages such as English in the later years (Simpson, 2017),
and various models of Mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTB-MLE)
have arisen (Benson, 2004). While such developments represent a step in the
direction of improving educational outcomes through attention to language
policy, the 2016 UNESCO statistics suggest that we are still a long way from
providing education through a medium that all students understand. One reason
for this stems from the assumption – often falsely made – that the local or
national language promoted in policy is actually the language children speak
at home. For example, in India the medium of instruction in government schools
corresponds to the official language of each state (e.g. Hindi, Bengali).
However, this language does not necessarily match the actual language used by
students at home and in their communities (Erling et al., 2017). In addition,
there has been a failure to recognise the rich multilingual repertoires that
learners in often have and this has contributed to a delay in recognising such
contexts as being appropriate sites for multilingual education and language
supportive pedagogies (Clegg & Simpson, 2016; Tupas, 2015; Weber, 2014).
Moreover, in many low and middle income countries, particularly in Sub-Saharan
Africa, the use of the “mother tongue” – even if it corresponds to the
language that students speak at home – is usually advocated in policy only for
use in the first three years of primary school, followed by an abrupt shift to
the more widely used language to be used as the only medium of instruction for
the remainder of schooling. There is a lack of evidence that this model of
early exit transitional bilingual education is successful – with statistics in
many countries suggesting that it neither ensures access to content nor
language learning (Pinnock, 2009; Trudell, 2016). 
 
Even when models of bilingual education are implemented in policy, there are
serious challenges in their implementation. These include a lack of
recognition of the value of translanguaging and the continued use of students’
“mother tongue” in schooling beyond the primary level (Erling et al., 2017;
Erling et al., 2016). There is also often a lack of a structured transitional
period, no preparation for L2-medium education through L2 CALP in the yearly
years, no L2-supportive teaching of subjects after the switch, a lack of
teacher education structure to support this model, etc… There is also often a
lack of appropriate multilingual resources. All of this means that policies
which promote the use of students’ mother tongues are not always adhered to or
given the time or resource needed to be effective, and, as a result, schools
and communities often revert to using English as the ‘default medium’ (Erling
et al., 2017). Contributing to the challenge of implementing mother tongue
education are societal attitudes towards languages: research has demonstrated
that there are conflicting perspectives in communities about which languages
best serve countries and communities in terms of education and development
(Erling et al, 2014; Mohanty, 2010; Opoku-Amankwa & Brew-Hammond, 2011;
Trudell, 2007). Indigenous languages are often valued for cultural and
community reasons, while international languages like English as perceived as
enabling opportunities and access to wider communities. Further, low-cost
private schools, which often privilege the use of international languages as
media of instruction (particularly English), are gaining in popularity, often
due to dissatisfaction with government school quality, an issue that is often
conflated with medium of instruction (Annamalai, 2013; Erling et al., 2017;
Nair, 2015; Rubagumya, 2003). 
 
Given that linguistic diversity is increasingly common to most urban
classrooms in the world, ensuring that learning is delivered in a medium of
instruction that all learners can understand is becoming ever more pressing in
the formal education systems of most countries of the world. Therefore, this
volume seeks research contributions which explore some of the ways in which
multilingual pedagogies are working to enhance learning in a range of low and
middle income contexts, with the aim of sharing such findings across
boundaries and contributing to a discussion of the role of language in
ensuring quality education in any context. 

Aims and scope:

The aim of this volume is to provide a state-of-the-art collection of research
about the role of language in content learning in schools in a wide range of
low and middle income countries and other low-resource contexts. The focus
will be on educational practices and pedagogies to support content learning
and also the learning of dominant language(s). Chapters will focus on policies
and practices that have emerged organically or through educational
interventions to support learning. They will also explore various models of
multilingual or plurilingual education and the opportunities and challenges in
their implementation with regard to policy, practice and attitudes.
 
Theories and research into multilingual and plurilingual learning have often
arisen in high-resource, elite bilingual contexts of formal schooling. Indeed,
the term pluringualism is usually reserved to describe European contexts, and
not normally used with regard to low-resource contexts, where the focus tends
to be on forms of mother tongue and multilingual instruction. Therefore, an
additional aim of the volume is to forge connections between research about
multilingual and plurilingual education initiatives in both “the global South”
with “the global North”, where school populations are increasingly diverse and
multilingual. 

Call for proposals:
 
We invite theoretically grounded, empirical chapters to be part of this
volume. Among other topics, chapter contents might explore issues such as:
- the relevance of various linguistic and pedagogical concepts to low-resource
contexts (e.g. CLIL, codeswitching, mother-tongue-based multilingual
education, plurilingual education, translanguaging, etc.)
- the role of (flexible) multilingual or plurilingual learning and language
supportive pedagogies in achieving the SDG goals of inclusivity, equity,
quality and lifelong learning.
- official or grassroots interventions which have sought to resist inflexible
language policies and/or enhance content and language learning in low-resource
contexts through flexible multilingual, language-supported pedagogies (through
focusing on the transition, teacher education, resource production, etc.). 
- multilingual or plurilingual classroom discourse in content learning in
low-resource contexts (both teacher-student and student-student interactions).
- the creation and evaluation of multilingual resources for teaching content
and language.
- practices supporting fair and reliable assessment of content knowledge
within L2-medium, multilingual and plurilingual education contexts. 
- material and ideological challenges to implementing multilingual or
plurilingual education approaches and language supportive pedagogies.
- research explorations of whether in educational research carried out in
low-resource contexts substantiates the findings of research from
high-resource contexts, i.e. high levels of L1 proficiency are required to
achieve high levels of L2 proficiency and literacy (e.g. (Cummins, 2000;
Thomas & Collier, 2002).
- considerations of whether and, if so, how multilingual education can be
effectively implemented in low-resource contexts where there are significant
challenges in meeting the criteria for successfully implementing CLIL (cf.
(Ball, Kelly, & Clegg, 2015; Coyle, 2008). 
- ways in which development agencies, international organisations, and all
stakeholders in education can better consider the role of multilingualism and
medium of instruction in educational interventions, international assessments
and policy reform. 

Please direct any queries and your proposals, containing a title and 300 world
abstract, to Elizabeth Erling by 1 December 2018: elizabeth.erling at uni-graz.at

We are anticipating that first drafts of chapters will be due at the end of
May 2019, with final drafts due at the end of 2019 (6000-8000 words each).
 



Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics





 



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