Flexible Multilingual Education

Putting Children's Needs First

By (author) Jean-Jacques Weber

Publication date:

12 May 2014

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781783091997

This book examines the benefits of multilingual education that puts children’s needs and interests above the individual languages involved. It advocates flexible multilingual education, which builds upon children’s actual home resources and provides access to both the local and global languages that students need for their educational and professional success. It argues that, as more and more children grow up multilingually in our globalised world, there is a need for more nuanced multilingual solutions in language-in-education policies. The case studies reveal that flexible multilingual education – rather than mother tongue education – is the most promising way of moving towards the elusive goal of educational equity in today’s world of globalisation, migration and superdiversity.

Acknowledgements

1. Introduction

Part I

2. Using Non-standard Varieties in Education

3. The Issue of Access

4. What Makes and Breaks a Good Language-in-education Policy? A Social Perspective

Part II

5. The United States of America

6. Hong Kong and China

7. Singapore

8. South Africa

9. Luxembourg

10. Three Autonomous Communities of Spain: Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia

11. Conclusion

References

Index

Extremely readable, this book offers critical windows into a wide range of educational contexts illustrating different approaches to bilingual and multilingual education. The author sets the agenda for much needed future implementations of what he defines as flexible multilingual education by drawing lessons from the impact that each of the programs and policies analyzed has had on children's, parents' and society's language attitudes, ideologies and practices. All in all, a valuable resource for researchers, teachers and policy makers.