Thomas Babington Macaulay's 1835 minute on Indian education is widely held to be representative of the views which underpinned the English East India Company's replacement of Persian with English as the official language of administration in India in 1837, and the promotion of English and Indian vernacular languages as part of colonial educational…

French immersion (FI) programs in Canada have historically served predominantly Canadian-born, English-speaking students and families in their endeavour to learn both of the country's official languages, French and English. However, FI programs are becoming increasingly culturally and linguistically diverse as a result of increased global…

The notion of "linguistic minority" not only incorporates the concept of group but also serves to define that group. Yet the relation between language and group can be considered in various ways. The primary function of language being that of communication, this will necessarily play a key role in defining the contours of any group whose…

The aim of the Regional Dossier series is to provide concise descriptions of regional or minority languages in education, mainly in Europe but also in other parts of the world. The majority of the Hungarian-speaking population in Slovenia lives in the bilingual ethnically mixed area of the Prekmurje region, where both Slovene and Hungarian are…

This Regional Dossier focuses on the Austrian federal province of Carinthia, where the vast majority of the Slovene-speaking minority in Austria lives. The Slovene language belongs to the South Slavic language group. It was the official language of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia in former Yugoslavia and has been the state language of…

Language is something many individuals take for granted. It is usually when we discover that our language (or language variety) is different from and perhaps less valued than, the language of others or that our options are somehow limited, either because 'we do not speak/understand a language or language variety, or use it inappropriately or…

In the contemporary world, language, at the heart of all human communication, has experienced social change in new ways. Previously distant groups communicate with each other both because of new migrations and as a result of the use of the Internet and digital media. Intimate communication has been shaken to the core as a result of screen usage on…

This paper maps out the linguistic history of nation-building in the Philippines through the politics of "p" and "f" in the country. This politics concerns the various strategic acts of naming the national language at different periods of the country's history that have shaped its fate as the most hegemonic indigenous…

This paper seeks to examine the role of the official and "de facto" languages of anglophone Caribbean islands such as Jamaica. In reflecting on their statuses as users of language, tertiary level students registered in a Year One Performing Arts Program provided much insights into the interplay of both languages that coexist in society…

Technological innovation is only as powerful as the willingness of the people of a particular place to embrace it. Ghana's multilingual landscape has recently been repositioned as a source for early childhood literacy development in order to enfranchise more children in public education. One of the innovative technologies in this new multilingual…

The paper presents the core aims and objectives of the teaching materials developed within the IEREST (Intercultural Education Resources for Erasmus Students and their Teachers) project, and shows how the innovative approach adopted for these activities can be implemented in the classroom. The IEREST teaching modules are innovative in that the…

"Review of Research in Education: Vol. 38, Language Policy, Politics, and Diversity in Education" explores the role of educational language policies in promoting education as a human right. There are an estimated nearly 7,000 living languages in the world. Yet, despite the extent of language diversity, only a small number of the…

Power can be equated to the possession of a particular language used to navigate the world. In Mali and Burkina Faso, two former colonies of France, language choice for instruction in mainstream primary schools remains a struggle between the powerful and the powerless. Fifty years after independence from France, both countries continue to…