This research, conducted at a major university in Tanzania, investigated the personal experiences of multilingual students vis-à-vis the government's language policy requiring Swahili as the language of instruction (LoI) at the primary level and English at the secondary level. The participants, who spoke 25 different languages as their L1, were…

The articles in this issue of "Language and Education" highlight three important areas of research that inspire empirical investigation and theoretical debate in the field of language policy and planning (LPP): (1) the tension between power and agency, (2) the multi-layered nature of policy-making, and (3) researcher positionality. This…

Rapidly changing demographics challenge education systems everywhere. Multilingualism, in particular, brings challenges in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Here we draw attention to contexts and practices of multilingual education in southern settings that differ from those in northern ones. Whereas much of the literature indicates that…

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…

In 2000, voters in the US state of Arizona passed Proposition 203 "English for the Children," effectively abolishing bilingual education services in favor of a submersion approach termed Sheltered English Immersion. In this discussion, I use an ethnographic lens to highlight the logistical complexities involved in the negotiation of…

The role of African languages in formal and nonformal learning is the subject of increasing local, national and international interests. Cognitive and pedagogical reasons abound for using the language best understood by the learner. However, many nonpedagogical factors related to politics, economics, language attitudes and colonial history are…

Outlines different priorities of current policy and research in literacy education in Australian schools. Suggests that a number of generic and specific factors contribute to these differences: differences in perspective and responsibility of policymakers and researchers, different underlying theoretical assumptions, and changes in the current…

Ways are discussed that education and the discourse practices it authorizes can routinely repress, dominate, and disempower language users whose practices differ from the norms that it establishes. The ideas of two key theorists, Bourdieu and Bhaskar, are linked and applied to such issues as schooling, high status language, and minority discursive…

The continua model of biliteracy offers a framework to situate research, teaching, and language planning in linguistically diverse settings. The continua model is revisited from the perspective of international cases of educational policy and practice in linguistically diverse settings, and from a critical perspective that seeks to make explicit…