Background: Seeing how governments formulate decisions on our behalf is a crucial component of their ability to claim democratic legitimacy. This includes being seen to draw on the knowledge and evidence produced by their civil service policy advisers. Yet much of the advice provided to governments is being increasingly withdrawn from public…

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…

Throughout recorded history, slogans have been an important part of our public life. From political rhetoric and propaganda, to social movements and awareness-raising campaigns, their usage has overcome historical periods, cultural barriers, ethnic affiliation, political systems, party allegiance or personal taste. Arguably more than any other…

The purported "Golden Age" of American higher education, typically associated with the two decades following World War II, was marked by increasingly generous federal support of the nation's postsecondary institutions and their students. Unlike analyses that attribute this largesse to factors like geopolitics (i.e., a response to the…

The aim of this Afterword is to foreground and discuss some of the key themes emerging from the four studies in this special issue. I first consider the critical ethnographic approach to language policy and planning adopted in the studies, and the attention to language policy processes unfolding on different scales of social and institutional…

After years of education system reforms that, at best, tinker at the system's edges, generations of families and students remain systemically marginalized, underserved, underprepared, and undereducated. COVID-19 has only made starker and more urgent the unfinished work of ensuring that all students receive an excellent education. It is time to do…

With the proliferation of easy-to-use generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, students in college composition courses can and do take advantage of such technology to assist with essay writing. While a growing body of research does not see using these tools as a problem in itself, institutional, departmental, and instructor policies about generative…

Research on economic activity in Africa consistently ignores the importance of individuals' linguistic repertoires. We argue that an important contributing factor to the persistence of this lacuna is the lack of visibility of language in the social and economic data that is collected by governments through social surveys. We examine the specific…

Land acknowledgments are one step that educators and institutions can take to begin realigning their relationship with Indigenous peoples. However, many fear doing more harm than good when taking the first step of doing a land acknowledgment. In this paper an instructor who overcame such hesitation and an Indigenous faculty member share a six item…

Tiered vocabulary is a pervasive concept in academic scholarship, education policy, and schools. It involves placing individual words into hierarchically arranged tiers, based on their apparent simplicity, sophistication, utility, and complexity, with these categorisations used to determine which words carry value in the classroom. In this article…

What opportunities and challenges occur in reclaiming Indigenous languages within state institutions? This article considers the case of intercultural bilingual education in Ecuador. The school system is remarkable as a national-level initiative run by and for Indigenous "pueblos" and nationalities. Based primarily on two years of…

We explore the disconnect between education policy and culturally sustaining instruction, curriculum, discipline, and assessment for African American Language (AAL) Learners. Framing the omission of language policies as linguistic violence and anti-Black linguistic racism, we discuss antecedent and contemporary educational language policies and…

There is a need to decolonize English in order to reframe our relationships with fellow beings and our environment. English can frame water or oil as infinite, uncountable nouns, a tree as an inanimate, unconscious being, traditional and respected territories as wasteland, and animals as wildlife. With the current climate crisis, we know that…

This paper outlines potential actions and roles for intermediaries to facilitate the development and implementation of truly equitable education-to-career pathways systems. Specifically, it could guide the broader field of intermediary organizations and efforts to engage in policy and advocacy by outlining how intermediaries can influence the…

The field of language policy and planning (LPP) has increasingly expanded its focus beyond legislative measures and macro-level policies toward understanding the power of social actors and their interpretation, appropriation, and creation of language policies in societies. This article aims to advance LPP theory and research by offering a critical…