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…

The disruption to the national GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) examinations in England during the summer (June-August) exam period of 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been well documented; however, less attention has been paid to the challenges faced by complementary schools in preparing students for GCSEs in heritage…

International travel is still commonly touted as one of the most effective tools for language learning, yet it remains an elusive activity for those without a certain amount of economic or legal privilege. Although physical return to the home country is not always possible for refugees and their families--even one or more generation after…

Drawing on Sutton and Levinson's Socio-cultural Approach to policy, this study explores the experiences and collective language beliefs of 25 teachers implementing the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTBMLE) policy in two urban Philippine school districts. Mixed methods were used to understand policy enactment and teacher perspectives.…

Mother Tongue Education (MTE), despite being the most reliable method of learning, is a challenge for the African countries that fail to implement MTE policies due to lack of resources, stakeholders' attitudes towards mother tongues, and lack of political will. Keeping in view the plight of the primary implementers of such policies, hence, this…

Iceland has seen rapidly changing demographics in recent years as a result of growing immigration to the country. This is reflected in the education system where children speak altogether around 100 languages. This qualitative research aims at exploring the language policies and practices of diverse immigrant families and their cooperation with…

This article focuses on the ever-increasing stress on multilingual education (MLE) in policy documents, especially its pairing with mother tongues in education (MTE). This focus brings into relief the relationship between MTE, the preservation of linguistic diversity and social democracy. We argue that the outcome of this relationship crucially…

Typically, families from ethnic minority backgrounds and socioeconomic disadvantage are underrepresented in research. Using secondary data from a survey of the language practices of multilingual families during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, we sought to ascertain whether the unexpectedly large proportion of Bradford-based respondents…

This article reports a part of a larger study which examines the sociolinguistic dynamics within the Hausa community in Saudi Arabia. It focuses on how second-generation members of the Hausa Saudi community perceive their ethnic identity and investigates the relationship between their proficiency in the Hausa heritage language and their sense of…

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…

This book demonstrates the importance of raising multilingual children in the UK, both for the children's own benefit and for the benefit of society as a whole. Against the backdrop of both the rich linguistic diversity already present in the UK and the challenges faced by any languages other than a few major European languages to find any space…

Competing ideologies of literacy are well documented in the literature, articulating the gap between everyday literacies in people's lives and formalised literacy norms. Despite this recognition of literacy as 'situated', the gap in perceptions across generations regarding knowledge content and learning forms remains underexplored. This article…

The paper analyses the current situation of the Lithuanian language policy in the 2-3rd decade of the twenty-first century, which, as in some other European countries, has been determined by the confrontation between nationalistic and neoliberal attitudes of the society and the Seimas (Parliament). The reasons for updating language policy are…

Purpose: Children with hearing loss (HL) experience challenges in sound-related knowledge and techniques for manipulating sounds, which can affect their reading fluency. This study aims to use the unique phonetic, semantic, and visual integration of Chinese characters to access phonological information through visual representation, thereby…

Many ethnic communities living in multicultural societies have established Heritage Language Schools (HLS) to transmit ethnic language and preserve ethnic culture. The administration of these HLS is no easy task however (Arvanitis, 2004; Pu, 2012; Tamis, 2010). Research is needed to help better understand how HLS programs, such as the Hellenic…