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 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…

Dualist Hungary (1867-1918) was the linguistically most diverse would-be nation-state in the long nineteenth century, with less than half of its citizens speaking Hungarian as their home language and more than two-fifths being ignorant of it. The Nationalities Act of 1868 accommodated the language of court proceedings to that of the parties, but…

High-quality dual language immersion (DLI) programs can be a key lever to provide every student with a pathway to multilingualism. The Dual Language Immersion Playbooks (DLI Playbooks) provide a roadmap for the creation, design and adoption of policies, processes, programs, and practices that state educational agencies (SEAs), local educational…

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…

When an adult migrant begins to acquire a second language, it is often presumed that the learner is already equipped with first language literacy and can therefore transfer these same literacy skills during their acquisition of the new, second language. However, many adult second language (L2) learners lack the opportunity to develop first…

Focusing on language education policies in Bangladesh, this article shows how the policies have distracted people's attention from the harms inflicted on the country's Indigenous communities and their languages. I discuss two factors that have contributed to policy distractions in this context: a strong form of Bangla linguistic nationalism and a…

German, a West Germanic language belonging to the Indo-European family, is one of the languages of culture and education in Romania. It is spoken by one of 18 recognised minorities in Romania. German has been spoken in Romania throughout history and continues to be spoken today because various German-speaking groups settled in what is now Romania…

To address the evidence gap in making effective language of instruction (LOI) decisions, we propose a systematic review of the role of LOI choices in education programs and policies on literacy outcomes in multilingual educational contexts in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Grounded in a multidisciplinary theory of change (ToC)…

This article presents the current state of ongoing research on policy development and implementation of first language-based multilingual education in five northeastern provinces of Cambodia that are home to significant ethnolinguistic minority populations. This research, supported by CARE Cambodia in collaboration with the Ministry of Education,…

This paper discusses how the political interplay between English-in-society and English-in-education policy in the Global South(s) facilitates what I term 'English as a subtle technology of policy distraction' in postcolonial spheres that were colonised by languages other than English. 'English as a subtle technology of policy distraction' is…

Singapore is an ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse nation-state that has always practiced deliberate language policy and planning. The bilingual education policy, introduced shortly after the young nation's independence has led to the emergence of English-knowing bilinguals who are proficient in both English and their ethnically…

We suggest that while Indigenous languages are threatened by capitalist and neoliberal encroachments, responses from applied linguists in the academy can be misguided. To make our argument, we must first define neoliberalism, and examine how the broader neoliberal discourses of choice, competition and the free market have percolated and distilled…

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…

In 2009, the Department of Education of the Philippines released a directive to use the mother tongue as a medium of instruction from kindergarten to third grade. Among Southeast Asian countries, the Philippines pioneered the formal adaption of mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE). However, the policy is beset with both structural…