This volume marks the 2022 centenary of the first National Programme for Education in the Free State. Central to the outlook of the new educational programme was the position of the Irish language as a marker of Irish national identity and culture. Education was to be the means to revitalise the language and cultural nationalism eroded through…

Informed by the conceptual-analytical framework of LPP and bilingual education policy, this study addresses a unique and under-researched case of heritage language education policy for complementary Polish State Schools abroad. These are Polish governmental educational offering aimed at Polish migrants and their descendants. Data consist of two…

Families that live temporarily abroad for work or education (amongst other reasons) often encounter some difficulties to maintain their children's L1; particularly when they live in English-speaking countries. This study explores the language maintenance experiences of ten Saudi Arabian families sojourning in Australia, from the perspective of…

Indigenous methodologies for guiding, advising, and educating children have been in place since time immemorial. Those well-honed approaches to education were built to support whole and healthy individual development while also establishing a lifelong awareness and reverence for community, connection, kinship, and reciprocity. In Western cultures,…

Recent scholarship indicates several benefits of mother tongue education (MTE) in supporting student learning. Within one Mayan community in Guatemala, Ixil is the mother tongue spoken at home and faces extinction due to Indigenous oppression and genocide. This qualitative case study highlights efforts of 13 teachers and administrators at one…

There is difficulty in defining the profile of a Heritage Language Learner (HLL) due to the experiences with language that individuals face in their social and academic world. There are questions centered on whether a categorical distinction between the native speaker and the native user can be upheld; this is inherently problematic when there is…

The present paper analyzes the challenges of literacy development in cases of classical diglossia and bilingualism. The main argument is that the diverse levels of proficiency in the varieties present in a given linguistic market have implications for and are shaped by processes of literacy development, feelings of linguistic insecurity, and the…

In situations of extreme linguistic diversity, language promotion can be a very challenging undertaking. Decades of educational colonisation and foreign language dominance have produced inferiority complexes so that local or indigenous languages (Cameroonian mother tongues), because of their unofficial status, are perceived as liabilities rather…

This article suggests a theoretical framework for re-examining the complex relationship of language, literacy, and cultural practices, across multiple generations in the context of community-based Indigenous language revitalization. In the scholarship of Indigenous language revitalization and education, researchers have shifted from viewing…

English literacy skills are important in order to participate fully in public life; however, the heritage-based literacy skills learned outside of the classroom also are critical in the P-12 classroom. School teachers are important advocates for immigrant students--to preserve their first language and heritage, to integrate knowledge of their two…

When linguistic minority parents wish to develop and maintain their children's literacy in heritage languages (HLs), what can they do to help? How and to what extent do the individual contexts of language use and background affect the development and maintenance of HL literacy, compared with the sociocultural context of community? What are the…

What factors support linguistic minority children in developing and maintaining literacy in their heritage languages (HLs)? Very few quantitative studies have explored the role of sociocultural factors, especially in the development and maintenance of HL literacy. This paper addresses this gap by examining how the sociocultural context affects…

This article discusses Quechua speakers' religious literacy practices in the native language in a rural community located in the department of Cuzco (Peru). I argue that in a situation where the school did not play the role of developing or maintaining the written vernacular, a group of community members found specific situations where they felt…

Cambodian Americans are a fairly recent language minority group in the United States; most families arrived in the United States as refugees during the 1980s. Over the past 30 years, there has been great concern in the community regarding the maintenance loss of their native Khmer language. This article provides an historical and contemporary…

In a globalised world, literacy in local languages is affected by at least three significant trends: globalisation, regionalisation and nationalism. Literacy in local languages plays a major role in language maintenance and the management of identity. Local literacies in local languages can also be a source of resistance to the rapid sociocultural…