This critical systematic review of Australian research literature provides insights into the aspirations of Indigenous communities to collaborate with schools in establishing local Indigenous language and cultural programmes. This systematic review investigates the body of Australian research into the cultural, social and educational impacts on…

Building on the recent studies revealing that official bilingualism policies in Canada are often used to reinforce a specific racial and linguistic order, this paper addresses the impact of these federal-level policies on education policies at the provincial level. From the policy genealogy perspective, we examine Ontario's Heritage Languages…

In this comprehensive effort to study Indian education policies, the report categorizes the policies of five Northwest Region states based on 13 key policies identified in the literature and describes the legal methods used to adopt them, such as statutes, regulations, and executive orders. The study found that six of the key policies had been…

A discussion of public policy concerning bilingual education looks at why and how policy should be re-focused on helping Limited English Proficient (LEP) students make academic gains. It first examines some characteristics of the highly diverse and rapidly growing LEP population, including varied academic background, tendency to reside in small…

Examines sociolinguistic and historical context in which a dramatic increase in literacy (from 5 percent literacy in 1945 to 75 percent literacy in 1980) occurred in Indonesia, focusing on use of Bahasa Indonesian, the national language, and current efforts to extend literacy through nonformal education programs and to expand reading and writing…

Explores historical, social, political, linguistic, and pedagogic perspectives on the teaching of Finnish and Swedish as mother tongues in Finland, showing how three successive waves of nationalism have shaped the language curriculum development and policy and proposing a general framework for looking at the development of mother tongue programs…

Examines key educational policies and practices that limit opportunities for bilingual education teachers to obtain academic language proficiency in Spanish. Bilingual-education teacher training cannot make up for ground lost by educators who lack prior attainment of math and science Spanish-language skills. Effective Spanish-language competency…

Describes the Local Languages Literacy Project in the Southern Sudan; delineates the most important educational, socioeconomic, and linguistic variables affecting the success of large-scale literacy programs in Africa; and questions the widely held assumption that indigenous language literacy is essential to subsequent literacy in the prestige…

Presents a bibliography of approximately 130 books, journal articles, dissertations, and UNESCO reports (in English and French) about language usage and policies in education in subsaharan Africa. Most items were published in the 1980s. Examines the complexities and politics of language in South Africa, Nigeria, and Tanzania. (SV)

Assesses Nigeria's efforts to achieve mother-tongue literacy for its citizens. Describes Nigeria's complicated sociolinguistic landscape, national language policies, and the Ife experimental project, studying the use of the mother tongue in primary schools. Points to nonlinguistic factors in educational success, including parental background,…

Much information of interest to bilingual education policymakers has emerged from basic research on language learning, bilingualism, and cognition. Among the conclusions drawn from it are the following: (1) bilingual education is superior to submersion education in many contexts;(2) one major bilingual education goal should be development of the…

The bulletin is an overview of events and developments in policy regarding the education of migrants and their families, as reflected in the press, periodicals, and ministerial press releases of Europe. The bulletin contains abstracts of actions taken in the European community, the European Parliament, the Council of Europe, Belgium, Denmark,…

The "language struggle" has been a focus of disagreement throughout South Africa's educational history. In contemporary South Africa, the issue of the language used as a medium of instruction has been most controversial in black education, where the government's policy of initial native language instruction has been widely denounced as…

This paper offers a general review of literature relating to the maintenance, development, and enhancement of Aboriginal languages in North America, particularly Canada. Drawing primarily on sociolinguistics, several concepts about language usage and change are outlined that are useful for the purposes of thinking about language maintenance. Next,…

There are approximately 170 indigenous languages spoken in Brazil, by a population of about 200,000. Language policy regarding these communities has not been well defined or explicit. Through several changes of constitution, only Portuguese has been considered the national and official language. Only recently has the government begun to develop a…