Language education policy in Arizona has been on a rollercoaster over the last five years. Between 2019 and 2024, the state shifted from strict English-only enforcement to loosening restrictions and encouraging dual language approaches, then back to strict English-only enforcement. In this forum piece, we use approaches from critical discourse…

Drawing on Sutton and Levinson's Socio-cultural Approach to policy, this study explores the experiences and collective language beliefs of 25 teachers implementing the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTBMLE) policy in two urban Philippine school districts. Mixed methods were used to understand policy enactment and teacher perspectives.…

South Africa immediately springs to mind as the epitome of multilingual language policies. In fact, its Constitution granted official status to 11 languages in 1996, and the Language Policy in Higher Education passed by the Ministry of Education in 2002 required universities to develop and use the indigenous official languages as academic…

While language education programs were created with an equity stance in mind--with the goals of increasing access and facilitating academic success for ethnically and linguistically marginalized students--the larger educational context has compromised access for multiply marginalized students. Recognizing a need for more complex understandings of…

The Austrian education policy employs a segregated model of language support, ostensibly to provide equitable opportunities for language learners. Prior research has demonstrated that this model has not fully achieved its objective of equalizing opportunities, as students persistently confront many academic and socio-emotional challenges. To gain…

English-medium instruction (EMI) is on the rise around the world due to globalization, internationalization and neoliberal ideologies which equate English with social capital, prestige, and success in the labour market. While many EMI policies aim to equip students with English as a 'lingua academia', produce 'neoliberal subjects' and compete in…

In this paper, we provide an overview of the policies that have existed in relation to Australian First Nations students' languages, and English language and literacy learning before exploring how the politics of distraction manifests in this context. We then share our findings of an analysis of Australian language education policies for First…

For over two decades, emergent bilingual students in Arizona have languished under the state's English-only Structured English Immersion policies. Using Theo Van Leeuwan's (2007) legitimation in discourse framework, this study longitudinally tracks shifts in legitimation tactics across the four iterations of the policy--its inception with…

How does early educational quality affect longer-term academic outcomes? We shed light on this question via a natural experiment in the Philippines--the implementation of a mother tongue education policy in public schools in kindergarten to Grade 3. This policy led to an unexpected decline in educational quality, but differentially in a subset of…

Kazakhstan has made remarkable strides forward in internationalisation of its higher education by adopting a trilingual education policy, joining the Bologna Process, cooperation with foreign universities, and academic mobility. As a result, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of English medium instruction (EMI) programmes offered by…

Due to modernisation and Englishisation in Bahrain, noticeably different types of bilingual and bicultural experiences exist, especially among the youth. Recently, the rise of Chinese education policies in the region raises the question of how it might alter the local linguistic market and the forms of capital within it. Applying a…

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 marks a significant shift in India's educational framework, particularly with its emphasis on multilingual education (MLE) and mother tongue-based instruction (MTI). Recognizing India's vast linguistic diversity, the policy advocates for teaching in the mother tongue or local language until at least Grade…

Studies that examine the rise of CFL policy in Saudi HE institutions are still rare. Through the "language comprehensive competitiveness framework" (LCCF) for the Chinese language? Consisting of policy, economic, cultural, and population competitiveness (Xu, J. 2007. [Chinese characters omitted]. [Language planning and language…

This study examines the current landscape of language policy in higher educational institutions (HEIs) in Georgia, focusing on teaching, research, and administration. A purposive selection of strategic documents from seventeen public and private universities forms the basis of analysis using Thematic Content Analysis (TCA). The research identifies…

Mother Tongue Education (MTE), despite being the most reliable method of learning, is a challenge for the African countries that fail to implement MTE policies due to lack of resources, stakeholders' attitudes towards mother tongues, and lack of political will. Keeping in view the plight of the primary implementers of such policies, hence, this…