Whilst mainstream schools in England may encourage multilingualism by insisting on the study of foreign languages, multilingual children are not always provided with support for the maintenance of their heritage languages and cultures. In response to this shortcoming, communities organise themselves to support their young members by setting up…

Producing local materials is a challenge to mother tongue education programs especially in linguistically diverse contexts. To address this, a five-day teacher training program on materials localization for K-3 teachers in a linguistically diverse area in the Philippines was designed and implemented. The program was based on frameworks about…

This article presents findings from the global literacy project, Critical Connections: Multilingual Digital Storytelling (MDST), which provides a means of nurturing and reflecting multiliteracies in practice. It recognises the power of storytelling and the space stories offer both for self-representation and for engaging with otherness. It draws…

This paper discusses structural and ideological challenges to mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB-MLE) which has in recent years been gaining ground in many educational contexts around the world. The paper argues, however, that MTB-MLE is set against these challenges - referred to here as inequalities of multilingualism - which prevent…

This article draws on research carried out in a Chinese complementary school in Scotland. The research focused on children's experience of learning to read Chinese and on the strategies that they used to support their learning. Here, I provide an account of one particular aspect of this research, namely the creation of a dialogic space for…

Issues affecting pre-school education in a rural area of Kenya are highlighted in a study of a mother tongue education (MTE) programme in one indigenous language group, the Pokomo. Factors supporting the introduction of MTE include official support for MTE, the welcoming of non-government stakeholder involvement in education, the presence of…