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…

The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 marks a significant shift in India's educational framework, particularly with its emphasis on multilingual education (MLE) and mother tongue-based instruction (MTI). Recognizing India's vast linguistic diversity, the policy advocates for teaching in the mother tongue or local language until at least Grade…

Translanguaging pedagogies support multilingual students by activating prior knowledge, integrating home languages and cultures, and utilizing multimodal learning. However, as equity-oriented pedagogies, they redress long-standing practices of denying students access to their home languages or demanding a strict separation of their interwoven…

This book explores alternative approaches to foreign language education in a context which is traditionally dominated by English-only approaches, and widely viewed as highly monolingual. It examines the grassroots classroom practices of teachers and their assistants involved in plurilingual education in the first longitudinal research of its type…

This paper explores the relationship between language education and identity realization and the consequences of choosing either an Indigenous or a colonial language education approach. The focus is on the African postcolonial context; however, the arguments are also substantiated by examples from other parts of the world. I argue for a…

This paper analyzes Nepal's language education policy from a decolonial perspective, examining how rights-based (neo)liberal ideologies and policies do not necessarily contribute to creating space, either ideological or implementational (Hornberger, 2005), for Indigenous languages in education. Drawing on the theory of "decoloniality"…

An indigenous or community language is the language that nurtures the child in the early years of his or her life. The UNESCO land mark publication in 1953 underscores the importance of educating children in their community languages: an education that is packaged in a language which the child does not understand is simply difficult for the child.…

Higher education organizations in countries where English is not the native tongue must function in a multilingual mode, using English as their primary language for scientific exchange and academic publication and relying on the native language for instruction and administration. When operating in a multilingual mode of communication and identity…

Two major, inter-related issues are analysed in this paper -- mother tongue (MT) and early childhood care and education (ECCE). Evidence tells us that learning first in one's MT leads to better outcomes in the future -- for individuals, cultures, and nations. But MT is used rarely in ECCE programmes and the early grades of primary school so that…

This article explores the recent development of translanguaging from the perspective of multilingualism. This is in light of the multilingual turn in the field of foreign language teaching, particularly English language teaching (ELT), which challenges the fixed and traditional monolingual framework for foreign language education. In particular,…

While the language portrait (LP) is a visual research method that can make visible speakers' multilingualism, this article considers how and why speakers may use the LP to make elements of their linguistic repertoire "invisible." Analysing the portraits created by three primary school students in Luxembourg, I explore why these young…

Using advanced quantitative methods, this article demonstrates that cumulative exposure to the school language is the best language experience predictor of proficiency in that language (as indexed by sentence repetition, lexical semantic, and discourse semantic tasks) in a highly diverse group of 5- to 7-year-old bilingual children in monolingual…

As global migration and transnational mobility have increased steadily in the recent few decades, interests in equity-based theories and pedagogies have intensified to respond to racially and linguistically diverse student needs in today's classrooms. Raciolinguistic ideology is a theoretical framework challenging monoglossic language ideologies…

This paper explores whether children and young people (CYP) with additional learning needs (ALN) are at a systemic disadvantage regarding Welsh language opportunities. Justification pertaining to why this should be on the radar of educational psychologists (EPs) in Wales is provided. Congruent with critical realism, quantitative and qualitative…

Emergent bilingual students in the U.S. often attend English-medium schools where their bi- and multi-lingual language resources are ignored and dismissed. This article draws on a social literacies perspective to explore how a second-grade teacher and her multilingual students re-framed one English-medium classroom to welcome and include…