In a highly multilingual country like India, challenges and opportunities arise in education and language policy. Although multilingualism is often associated with developmental advantages, Indian primary school children generally show low learning outcomes, specifically on literacy. Here we examine the influence of mother tongue education and…

National language planning and family language planning may converge or diverge. As 2019 marks the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the new China, we examined language planning at both the national level and the family level in China. We first revisited language policy and planning in China over the last seventy years through a policy…

There is strong controversy over the application and effects of the Linguistic Immersion Policy in Catalonia, a policy that established that the Catalan language should constitute the only vehicular language during the different levels of compulsory schooling. While some of the effects of this policy have been determined, the evidence on other…

Since independence in 1975, Papua New Guinea, the most linguistically diverse country in the world, has had both unofficial and official policies of mother-tongue education. However, limited resources and support for mother-tongue education has led communities to incorporate bottom-up language planning as well. In particular, this paper examines…

Public education policies governing language revitalization and the teaching of indigenous languages have been in place for more than 20 years in Chile. In this journey, there has been considerable progress nationwide in the education of a generation of children in an intercultural socio-educational environment. However, there still exist…

The research question of the present paper is the following: to what degree (if any) is gender relevant as an explanatory factor in, firstly, the process of assimilation and later, the process of (re)vitalisation of indigenous and minority languages in northern Fenno-Scandia (the North Calotte)? The assimilation of the ethnic groups in question…

In 2009 the Philippines introduced a mother tongue-based multilingual education language policy requiring the "mother tongue" as the language of instruction (LOI) in kindergarten through grade 3. Using teacher classroom language data collected from four LOI groups in 2019, we compared the frequency of teachers' use of the target LOI in…

Tatarstan has been developing several public policies in favour of the Tatar language; probably the most relevant is bilingual schooling. Given this, the present research compares the monthly wage income between those who studied before, during, and after the implementation of this educational reform. Using data from the Russia Longitudinal…

Despite a century-old narrative as a monolingual country with quaint regional dialects, Thailand is in fact a country of vast linguistic diversity, where a population of approximately 60 million speak more than 70 languages representing five distinct language families (Luangthongkum, 2007; Premsrirat, 2011; Smalley, 1994), the result of a history…

Through a comparison of France and Germany, this article investigates why the overall conception of multilingualism promoted by the education systems of the two countries favours the teaching of "useful" European standard languages over that of minority and migrant languages that are conceived in merely cultural terms. Adopting a…

Singapore's bilingual policy legitimises English not only as the language of governmental administration and interethnic communication, but also as the medium of instruction in all schools on all levels and across all subjects except mother tongues (MTs). As a result of these politics of language recognition, a visible shift has occurred in all…

In some settings, medium of instruction (MOI) policies in multilingual education break out into public debates in mass media involving politicians, business leaders, government officials, parents, and school children. These public discussions of MOI often index struggles over the distribution of political power and economic resources, and issues…

In this paper, we try to unravel some of the unintended and intended academic effects associated with post-Soviet educational reforms by focusing on three cases: Estonia, Latvia and Russia. We have chosen this comparison because a unique "natural experiment" in the three countries allows us to compare the changing academic performance on…

The project "The educational value of various aspects of multilingualism in the classroom of the Basque Country and of Friesland" concerns a comparative study of the languages in the schools in the Basque Autonomous Community and in the Province of Friesland. It is part of the agreement between the general administration of the Basque…

CThe article is a study of Latino immigrant parents' agency toward primary language (L1) instruction in the face of restrictionist language policy. Certain attitudes and characteristics were associated with advocacy for Spanish L1 instruction. Interviews conducted in an urban California school district among parents with different background…