Search results for "language education policy"
showing 5 items of 5 documents
Language Education Policies and Early Childhood Education
2020
This chapter discusses the importance of different types of early language education in the public system according to national policy in two geopolitical contexts: Continental Northern Europe and the UK. We define early language education policy as the language policies in early childhood education (ECE) including planning, practices, and ideologies related to the teaching and learning of languages. We present a variety of theoretical approaches and discuss their applicability to the field of early language education research. These approaches include traditional top-down policy implementation models as well as more dynamic and ecological theoretical approaches. Following that, we look at …
Language orientations in early childhood education policy in Finland and Norway
2021
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/),which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This article investigates the language orientations in education policy documents for early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Finland and Norway. Finland, an officially bilingual country, and Norway, a predominantly monolingual country, share similar views on ECEC. However, the ECEC field in both c…
Language Education Policy in England : Is English the elephant in the room?
2011
This paper offers a critical review of language education policies and the state of language education in England over the last decade (2000-2010), which has been characterised by a bewildering array of initiatives to promote language learning, year-on-year improved grades of school exams, and language education policies showing little coherence. Conversely, both media and student voices on the subject of language learning in the UK reveal high awareness of the UK’s poor performance relative to other EU countries. This picture is interpreted within the context of Global English, proposing that a tacit assumption that English is enough offers a coherent explanation of current practices and p…
Learning French in the UK setting : policy, classroom engagement and attainable learning outcomes
2019
Due to the contemporary dominance of English as global lingua franca, all other “foreign languages” face a number of challenges in formal education. This paper describes the recent evolution of policy and practice regarding foreign language education in England, with a particular focus on early language learning. Evidence from a classroom study of French as foreign language is used to illustrate primary school instructional practices and children’s engagement in this setting, and their learning outcomes. Conclusions are drawn concerning sustainable approaches to the teaching of languages other than English in the early school years, in an English - dominated linguistic landscape. peerReview…
Linguistic Diversity as a Problem and a Resource – Multilingualism in European and Finnish Policy Documents
2012
Societies in Europe and across the world are under constant pressure to cope with increasing multilingualism and multiculturalism. This development has its roots in different global and local societal and economic processes. On the one hand, globalization is putting pressure on the economy in that more varied language resources are needed in society. On the other hand, immigration is constantly on the increase, giving rise to what Vertovec (2006) has termed super-diversity, a ‘condition distinguished by a dynamic interplay of variables among an increased number of new, small and scattered, multiple-origin, transnationally connected, socio-economically differentiated and legally stratified i…