Imagining Multilingual Schools Languages in Education and Glocalization

by Garcia, Ofelia; Skutnabb-Kangas, Tove; Torres-Guzman, Maria E.

• ISBN13: 9781853598944
• ISBN10: 1853598941
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-07-31
• Publisher: Multilingual Matters

Summary

This book brings together visions and realities of multilingual schools throughout the world in order to examine the pedagogical, socioeducational, and sociopolitical issues that impact on their development and success. The chapters describe and analyze pedagogical, instructional, and policy efforts to develop multilingualism through school with different targeted populations -- immigrant students, indigenous peoples, traditional minorities, majorities, and multiethnic/multilingual groups. Each contribution, many written by well-known scholars in the field of bilingual and multilingual education, affirms the desirability of multilingualism as a societal resource and as a right of individuals, while acknowledging the social, economic and political differences that make the acquisition of multilingualism easy for some, and difficult for others. And yet, the book focuses on the school as a place of promise and resistance, having the potential to preserve, recover, and expand the world's linguistic diversity. The introduction, written by the co-editors, identifies the conceptual threads that are developed throughout the chapters. But the chapters themselves remind us of the importance of local conditions, despite the global pressures of the 21st century, in imagining and creating multilingual educational spaces.

Author Biography

Ofelia García is professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, where she presently serves as coordinator of the Bilingual Education program and co-director of the Center for Multiple Languages and Literacies. García research interests are in the areas of language education policy, sociology of language, immigrant education, in particular the education of US Latinos, and teacher education for urban schools.Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, University of Roskilde, Denmark, and Åbo Akademi University, Finland. Her main research interests: linguistic human rights, multilingual education, subtractive spread of English, and the relationship between linguistic (and cultural) diversity and biodiversity (also in practice, on an ecological smallholding, with her husband Robert Phillipson).María E. Torres-Guzmán is associate professor of Bilingual/Bicultural Education in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her recent publications are on dual language education models both in the U.S. and in the Basque Country, as well as pedagogical practices of read-alouds in such programs. She has also published in the area of multicultural education and the preparation of teachers.

Table of Contents

Editors' Preface	ix
Part 1: Introduction
1 Weaving Spaces and (De)constructing Ways for Multilingual Schools: The Actual and the Imagined
Ofelia Garcia, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Maria E. Torres-Guzmán	3	(48)
Part 2: Pedagogies, Values and Schools
2 Identity Texts: The Imaginative Construction of Self through Multiliteracies Pedagogy
Jim Cummins	51	(18)
3 Imagining Multilingual Education in France: A Language and Cultural Awareness Project at Primary Level
Christine Hélot and Andrea Young	69	(22)
4 Reimagining Multilingual America: Lessons from Native American Youth
Teresa L. McCarty, Mary Eunice Romero, and Ofelia Zepeda	91	(20)
5 Attitudes Towards Language Learning in Different Linguistic Models of The Basque Autonomous Community
Feli Etxeberria-Sagastume	111	(26)
Part 3: Extending Formal Instructional Spaces
6 Back to Basics: Marketing the Benefits of Bilingualism to Parents
Viv Edwards and Lynda Pritchard Newcombe	137	(13)
7 Popular Education and Language Rights in Indigenous Mayan Communities: Emergence of New Social Actors and Gendered Voices
Karen Ogulnick	150	(21)
Part 4: Tensions between Multiple Realities
8 Imagined Multilingual Schools: How Come We Don't Deliver?
Elana Shohamy	171	(13)
9 Monolingual Assessment and Emerging Bilinguals: A Case Study in the US
Kathy Escamilla	184	(16)
10 The Long Road to Multilingual Schools in Botswana
Lydia Nyati-Ramahobo	200	(23)
Part 5: Negotiating Policies of Implementation
11 Nichols to NCLB: Local and Global Perspectives on US Language Education Policy
Nancy H. Hornberger	223	(15)
12 Cultural Diversity, Multilingualism and Indigenous Education in Latin America
Luis Enrique López	238	(24)
13 Multilingualism of the Unequals and Predicaments of Education in India: Mother Tongue or Other Tongue?
Ajit K. Mohanty	262	(22)
Biographies	284	(8)
References	292	(27)
Index	319