In this article, we show how Ofsted operates as institutional language police, and how the inspectorate's attitudes about language maintain race-class inequalities under a guise of social justice, equality and evidence-based practice. Our research has repeatedly demonstrated how Ofsted reproduces long-standing, deficit-based and colonial logics…

Bilingualism is associated with a number of false beliefs, myths and misconceptions, which carry implications for bilingual education and policymaking. While the language used, often in the media, to express such misconceptions may have become more subtle, a negative bias remains and is arguably more difficult to detect and defend against. The…

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…

This paper is an initial attempt to characterise the schoolscape of a four-century old higher education institution in the Philippines and the oldest existing university in Asia, The Royal, Catholic, and Pontifical University of Santo Tomas (UST). Through a systematic inventory of 2,410 visual signs, the analysis of the functional sign…

The research reported on in this article examines the attitudes towards student linguistic diversity and multilingual pedagogies of 30 university lecturer participants enrolled for an accredited short course on multilingual pedagogies at a South African institution. The aim of the course is to support lecturers in helping students gain access to…

Though "Lau v. Nichols (Lau)" has garnered substantial educational gains for multilingual learners (MLs), we address two limitations. Namely, there is a need to historicize the interlocking language, ability, and racial differences and to examine MLs through an intersectional lens. We delineate the historical entanglements of language,…

This article seeks to understand the challenges of literacy acquisition under the Thematic Curriculum reform in Uganda, which introduced Mother Tongue instruction in lower primary. We compare teachers' perspectives from two central districts using Luganda and two peripheral districts using Ateso, drawing on a multi-layered approach to understand…

This qualitative study examines how Thai EFL teachers utilize pedagogical translanguaging in multilingual secondary school classrooms, employing both planned and unplanned strategies to support English language learning. Grounded in Cenoz and Gorter's (2021) multilingual pedagogical translanguaging model, the study investigates how teachers…

Linguistic diversity at Czech schools has increased in the last decade, and it has become a new everyday reality. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of studies investigating lived experiences with managing multilingualism at schools. Our study examines schools as multilingual social spaces in which the visible language choice on signs reveals the…

Teachers play an essential role in fostering linguistic security in their classrooms. The aim of this study is to identify the language ideologies articulated by teachers in the Francophone schools of the English-dominant context of British Columbia (Canada) in order to explore how the different practices they implement to foster the use of French…

Globalisation is increasingly affecting universities worldwide. In African contexts, language policies exhibit an inheritance situation in which countries continue to implement policies which favour colonial languages in education. This paper investigates the Malawian higher education context and the ways in which staff engage with…

In this paper, the authors report the findings of a narrative review of extant international research literature to propose a conceptual model for how young children's language is entangled with place. Educational policy, curriculum documents, and speech and language therapy assessments in England tend to frame children as placeless and treat the…

Background: Pakistan inherits a multilingual heritage. Along with Urdu, 70 different languages are spoken. The 1973 Constitution officially recognizes Urdu as Pakistan's only national language. Purpose: Until today, the adoption and promotion of Urdu as a medium of educational instruction has remained a point of controversy. Existing research…

Educational linguists across England and the USA have long critiqued deficit-based language ideologies in schools, yet since the early 2010s, these have enjoyed a marked resurgence in England's education policy as evident in discourses, funding, and pedagogical materials related to the so-called 'word gap.' This article conceptualizes the word gap…

The main focus of the article is on teachers' classroom language practices in eight primary schools in Oshana and Khomas school regions. Language ideologies and translanguaging practices were used as a theoretical framework to evaluate the language ecologies that were created by the language practices in the schools included in the research study.…