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This paper analyses the language-in-education policies implemented to integrate international immigrants into the Catalan language community in Vic, Catalonia. It focuses on the Catalan Government's ‘Languages and Social Cohesion Plan’ (LIC) plan, Vic city council's local education plans, which were adopted as part of LIC plan, and the EBE centre, a Catalan Government initiative that was opened in Vic as an educational welcome space for newly arrived immigrant families. Drawing upon empirical data gathered from semi-structured interviews and substantiated with analysis of policy documents, this paper advances three main claims. First, that immigrant families and community members in Vic have played a vital role in reinforcing the city's language-in-education policies. Second, that immigrant parents can contribute to their children's linguistic integration, even when they are not fluent in the minority language. Third, that the wider discourse of social cohesion in Catalonia has facilitated this greater participation amongst the immigrant family and community members. Together, these three claims present a counterargument to the growing belief in the literature on minority language revival and revitalisation that the family and the community no longer play a significant role in minority language maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inspired by the ecological model of human development and inter-subjectivist perspective of identity formation, the article addresses the complexity of professional interactions and highlights the spectrum of possible reactions of Russian-speaking teachers in Estonia to changes in the domain of language-in-education. The qualitative research demonstrates different models of the teachers’ self-views that are constructed and practiced in the interaction within significant layers identified by the ecological approach and reveals the diversity of the dilemmas teachers as professionals face in their everyday working lives. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports on an ethnographic study which investigated the implementation of the Kenyan language-in-education policy in a school in rural Western Kenya. The study reveals the complexity of policy implementation in a multilingual and multiethnic context where language shift and civil unrest are occurring, and where there is pressure to move learners to Kiswahili and English despite the policy's support for mother tongue (MT) education in the early grades. In such a setting teachers are caught in the middle of conflicting aspirations and are left having to balance their ideals for language teaching with the complex reality of their teaching context. In order to manage the tensions which arise in this situation, teachers employ classroom practices such as code-switching and choral teaching, and endeavour to move learners as quickly as possible from the MT, in this case Sabaot, to the languages of wider communication. Included in the article is a conceptual framework which illustrates the most significant areas of tension for Sabaot teachers. This framework could serve as a guide for other groups to identify potential tensions in the fact-finding stage of language planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Official policy in post-apartheid education is aimed at redressing linguistic inequity in schooling by promoting the 11 official languages of South Africa through mother tongue instruction. However, since the life chances of children are inextricably linked to the language of power, many parents believe that their children would benefit from instruction in English. Consequently, there has been an ever-increasing demand for English to be the language of instruction in schools. Utilising case studies of Grade 4 pupils at three desegregated schools, this research sought to determine whether Grade 4 learners, whose mother tongue is not English, would be able to express their conceptual mathematical understanding better when tested in English or in their mother tongue. The major finding was that although many non-first-language English speaking Grade 4 learners are challenged by having to acquire abstract subject knowledge through a non-mother tongue medium, they face an even greater challenge when tested in their mother tongue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Singapore’s officially bilingual education policy, in which the majority of children are schooled through a non-native medium with their ‹Mother Tongue’ (an ethnic heritage language that is not necessarily spoken in the home) as a single school subject only, has resulted in dramatic language shifts in the population and high academic achievement as measured by international comparison studies. Much current second language acquisition theory would predict failure for such a policy. This paper examines the assumptions concerning language planning and second language acquisition underlying the city-state’s language-in-education policy, their relation to current theory in the field, and how the case of Singapore can support or challenge these different theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a language ideological approach to describe the ongoing processes of the construction and negotiation of emergent romano- or lusobourgish ethnicities and identities within Luxembourgish society. The first two sections discuss the main theoretical assumptions of the language ideological approach and provide an overview of the language situation in Luxembourg. The following two sections present the results of an ethnographic study of language use, language ideologies and identity construction among luso-descendant adolescents attending a number of youth centres in Luxembourg city. The final section considers the implications of these results for language-in-education policy and, more particularly, the importance of creating “literacy bridges” for transnational students, rather than some form of mother-tongue education, as a first step towards the elusive goal of educational equity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central focus of the article is the roles of translation in the production of children's books in South Africa, and how issues of multilingualism, power differentials between languages and language-in-education policy affect the uses and functions of translation in the production of children's books in South Africa. The article first provides a brief overview of the discursive and practical situation relating to education, multilingualism and mother-tongue education in South Africa. Following this background, the investigation proceeds in three parts. The first is a brief analysis of the broader current South African publishing scenario, with emphasis on language issues and books for children. This is followed by a discussion of the uses of translation in the production of children's books. The results of a survey among publishers are reported alongside an analysis of a sample of data from a recent catalogue of African-language children's books in South Africa. A few broad trends emerge from the discussion. Most pertinently, it appears that translation plays a very different role in the production of Afrikaans children's books and African-language children's books. These differing roles may be related to complex forces in the uniquely postcolonial polysystem of South African literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores some of the reasons why, in spite of the exemplary fashion in which democratic South Africa responded to the constitutional imperatives pertaining to language, policy implementation has been slow. It is argued that language policy and planning in South Africa have become trapped in a gap between 'intention' and 'performance'. This study investigates the performance of the Pan South African Language Board, as government's statutory language planning agency mandated to promote the use of the African languages. The study argues that language planning agencies, such as PanSALB, are pivotal in addressing attitudinal problems regarding the role of African languages in education. Language planning as a marketing strategy is proposed as an integral part of reviewing and remaking policy, with a view to ensuring the ecological wellbeing of African languages, and hence their future as languages of learning and teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I first review previous research on the topic of safetalk. I then apply some of the insights derived from this discussion to a case study of the Luxembourgish primary school system. The study uses both ethnographic and discourse analysis, and focuses in particular on the role of French language varieties in a system that forces large numbers of romanophone students to go through a German-language literacy programme. The picture that emerges reveals what changes would be needed to break through restrictive safetalk practices and enable more effective and more equitable learning. However, it is argued that the difficulties of implementing such changes are compounded by a number of language ideologies that underpin both preschool and primary school education in Luxembourg. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is an extensive and growing literature that addresses issues related to most aspects of language-in-education policy in South Africa, one area in which the literature remains fairly sparse has been that of the implications of current government policy for South African Sign Language (SASL). This article presents an overview of the complex issues presented by the case of SASL for language-in-education policy, and offers a series of recommendations for how these issues might best be addressed. Given the relatively small research base that currently exists dealing explicitly with SASL, the article makes use of both the South African research literature and the far more substantial international research that addresses issues of sign language, education, and language policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the discussion of English language spread policies, scholars have taken various viewpoints. One approach concerns the diffusion-of-English and language ecology paradigms, which distinguish externally dominant English spread and resistance to this hegemony. Others have questioned this approach, and proposed that English language spread is not limited to external control, but that local forces also play a role in the spread. These perspectives challenge English language teachers and others to look at the impact of the local situation on the spread of English. This paper discusses English language spread in education at primary school level in Turkey, Latvia and France. The description is based on a review of research on English spread in these three countries as well as analysis of documents such as class enrolments, policy in education, constitutional legislation and reports by ministries of education. Despite some differences in policy in the three countries, they are all experiencing increases in the study of English in primary education. The paper concludes with findings on the applicability of the diffusion-of-English and language ecology perspectives on English language spread in local EFL contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the myth of ethnic and linguistic homogeneity prevails, Japan has always been a multiethnic and multilingual entity. The existence of ethnic minorities remained relatively invisible, and their activism to maintain their identities was not widely acknowledged in the public discourse. However, the influx of immigrants since the mid-1980s as a result of globalisation of the world economy, which forced education authorities to respond to their language needs, has made the multilingual and multiethnic student population more visible. This paper reveals how the responses by education authorities and schools to visible migrants differ from those to invisible long-existing ethnic minorities, and how these responses have impacted on invisible minorities, drawing on the case of ethnic Koreans. It argues that the combination of long-lasting activism by and for Koreans and the visible impact of immigrants offers the potential to challenge the mainstream Japanese schooling. First, responses to immigrants effectively acknowledged the ethnically and linguistically diverse nature of the student population in Japanese schools, and the special needs of minorities. Second, activism for Koreans also took up the cause of the visible immigrants, and this helped to highlight ethnic Koreans' concerns. The focus on interactions between responses to these two groups illuminates the dialectic between globalisation and local forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting diversity has become a prominent goal in language-in-education policy discourse in tow broad context. On the one hand, language policies take on the challenge on maintaining and developing de facto linguistic and cultural diversity through language acquisition planing; on the other hand, they portray themselves as active agents of social change and aim to develop positive cross-cultural attitudes through language education. This paper these two main aspects of language-in-education policies. The discussion focused on the Australian and European policy discourses. These two contexts offer an interesting point of comparison as they represent Western democracies with a highly multicultural and multi-ethnic population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]