The role of agency in language planning and policy (LPP) is a recent focus of scholarship. Interest in agency has seen new issues and contexts being given prominence in LPP research. In this introduction, we present an overview of theoretical definitions of agency and the ways it has emerged as a concept in LPP scholarship. We consider how…

Despite the essential role of local, regional, national and international languages in human development, there is little reference to language planning in development aid discourse. Beginning with definitions of development aid and language planning, the paper examines how the two were linked in pre- and post-colonial times, showing how language…

This paper overviews issues relating to the role of ideologies and attitudes in multilingual education (MLE). It argues that ideologies and attitudes are constituent parts of the language planning process and shape the possibilities for multilingualism in educational programmes in complex ways, but most frequently work to constrain the ways that…

This paper overviews some of the domains of application of micro-level language planning approaches to foster multilingual education. It examines the language planning of local agents and the contexts in which their work contributes to multilingual education, either to expand or limit educational possibilities. It identifies four broad contexts of…

Timor-Leste offers a rich case study of the array of discursive influences on medium-of-instruction (MOI) policy in multilingual, post-colonial developing contexts. MOI policy in this young nation is a site of tension between struggles to define national identity in the shadow of colonial language ideologies and the globalised discourses of…

This overview identifies some common features of macro-level language planning and briefly summarises the changing approaches to the analysis of macro-planning in the field. It previews six cases of language-in-education planning in response to linguistic diversity presented by the contributors to this issue. The cases show how macro-planning can…

This article presents an overview of language-in-education policy development between 1999 and 2010 in the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. In the decade since independence language-in-education policy in this newly independent country has been dominated by debates about the medium of instruction. Over time, policy has shifted from an…

Timor-Leste celebrated its formal political independence on 20th May 2002. The National Constitution of the new nation declared the endogenous lingua franca (Tetum) and the former colonial language (Portuguese) to be co-official. The remaining local languages were given the status of national languages. Indonesian and English were designated as…