Almost all low- and middle-income postcolonial countries now use English or another dominant language as the medium of instruction for some, if not all, of the basic education cycle. Much of the literature about language-in-education in such countries has focused on the instrumentalist value of English, on one side, and the rights of learners to high quality mother tongue-based education, on the other. The polarised nature of the debate has tended to leave issues related to the processes of learning in English as a Medium Instruction (EMI) classrooms under-researched. This book aims to provide a greater understanding of the existing challenges for learners and educators and potential strategies that can support more effective teaching and learning in EMI classrooms. Contributions illustrate the impact that learning in English has on learners in a range of regional, national and local contexts and put forward theoretical and empirical analyses to support more relevant and inclusive educational policies. This volume was originally published as a special issue of Comparative Education.

This book calls for critical adaptations when theories of bilingual education, based on practices in the North, are applied to the countries of the global South. For example, it challenges the assumption that transitional models necessarily lead to language shift and cultural assimilation. Taking an ethnographically-based narrative on the purpose and value of bilingual education in Mozambique as a starting point, it shows how, in certain contexts, even a transitional model may strengthen the vitality of local languages and associated cultures, instead of weakening them. The analysis is based on the view that communicative practices in the classroom influence and are influenced by institutional, local and societal processes. Within this framework, the book shows how education in low-status languages can play a role in social and cultural transformation, especially where post-colonial contexts are concerned.

Critiquing the positioning of children from non-dominant groups as linguistically deficient, this book aims to bridge the gap between theorizing of language in critical sociolinguistics and approaches to language in education. Carolyn McKinney uses the lens of linguistic ideologies—teachers’ and students’ beliefs about language—to shed light on the continuing problem of reproduction of linguistic inequality. Framed within global debates in sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, she examines the case of historically white schools in South Africa, a post-colonial context where political power has shifted but where the power of whiteness continues, to provide new insights into the complex relationships between language and power, and language and subjectivity. Implications for language curricula and policy in contexts of linguistic diversity are foregrounded. Providing an accessible overview of the scholarly literature on language ideologies and language as social practice and resource in multilingual contexts, Language and Power in Post-Colonial Schooling uses the conceptual tools it presents to analyze classroom interaction and ethnographic observations from the day-to-day life in case study schools and explores implications of both the research literature and the analyses of students’ and teachers’ discourses and practices for language in education policy and curriculum.

This collection gathers together a stellar group of contributors offering innovative perspectives on the issues of language and translation in postcolonial studies. In a world where bi- and multilingualism have become quite normal, this volume identifies a gap in the critical apparatus in postcolonial studies in order to read cultural texts emerging out of multilingual contexts. The role of translation and an awareness of the multilingual spaces in which many postcolonial texts are written are fundamental issues with which postcolonial studies needs to engage in a far more concerted fashion. The essays in this book by contributors from Australia, New Zealand, Zimbabwe, Cyprus, Malaysia, Quebec, Ireland, France, Scotland, the US, and Italy outline a pragmatics of language and translation of value to scholars with an interest in the changing forms of literature and culture in our times. Essay topics include: multilingual textual politics; the benefits of multilingual education in postcolonial countries; the language of gender and sexuality in postcolonial literatures; translational cities; postcolonial calligraphy; globalization and the new digital ecology.

This book offers a critical exploration of the role of English in postcolonial communities such as India. Specifically, it focuses on some local ways in which the language falls along the lines of a class-based divide (with ancillary ones of gender and caste as well). The book argues that issues of inequality, subordination and unequal value seem to revolve directly around the general positioning of English in relation to vernacular languages. The author was raised and schooled in the Indian educational system.

When analyzed in multilingual contexts, English is often treated as an entity that is separable from its linguistic environment. It is often the case, however, that multilinguals use English in hybrid and transcultural ways. This book explores how multilingual East Africans make use of English as a local resource in their everyday practices by examining a range of domains, including workplace conversation, beauty pageants, hip hop and advertising. Drawing on the Bakhtinian concept of multivocality, the author uses discourse analysis and ethnographic approaches to demonstrate the range of linguistic and cultural hybridity found across these domains, and to consider the constraints on hybridity in each context. By focusing on the cultural and linguistic bricolage in which English is often found, the book illustrates how multilinguals respond to the tension between local identification and dominant conceptualizations of English as a language for global communication.

This text critically examines changes in Ghanaian language and literacy policy following independence in 1957 to consider its impacts on early literacy teaching. By adopting a postcolonial theoretical perspective, the text interrogates the logic behind policy changes which have prioritised English, local language, or biliteracy. It draws on data from interviews with teachers and researcher observation to demonstrate how policies have influenced teaching and learning. Dr Osseo-Asare’s findings inform the development of a conceptual framework which highlights the socio-cultural factors that impact the literacy and biliteracy of young children in Ghana, offering solutions to help teachers combat the challenges of frequent policy changes. This timely monograph will prove to be an essential resource not only for researchers working on education policies, teacher education, and English-language learning in postcolonial Ghana but also for those looking to identify the thematic and methodological nuances of studying literacy and education in postcolonial contexts.