Preview Multilingualism and Language in Education

MULTILINGUALISM AND LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION Sociolinguistic and Pedagogical Perspectives from Commonwealth Countries Edited by Androula Yiakoumetti

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CONTENTS

Notes on contributors Series Editors’ Preface

Introduction

Language policy and practice with a focus on Commonwealth contexts

Androula Yiakoumetti (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

PART ONE

Africa

Chapter 1

The sociolinguistic and language education landscapes of African Commonwealth countries

Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu (Howard University, USA)

Chapter 2

Multilingualism and language in education in Tanzania

Birgit Brock-Utne (University of Oslo, Norway) and Martha A. S. Qorro (University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)

Chapter 3

Language-in-education policy and practice in Ghanaian classrooms: Lessons from School for Life’s complementary education programme

Kingsley Arkorful (Education Development Center) and Carolyn Temple Adger (Center for Applied Linguistics, USA)

PART TWO

South Asia

Chapter 4

Language-in-education policy and practice in India: Experiments on multilingual education for tribal children

Ajit Mohanty (National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium) and Minati Panda (Jawaharlal Nehru University, India)

Chapter 5

Multilingual education in Singapore: Beyond language communities?

Ritu Jain and Lionel Wee (National University of Singapore)

Chapter 6

Translanguaging in Singapore: Discourse in monolingual versus bilingual classrooms

Viniti Vaish (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

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PART THREE

Australia

Chapter 7

Home dialect at school: The case of Australian Aboriginal English-speaking students

Farzad Sharifian (Monash University, Australia)

Chapter 8

Schooling within shifting langscapes: Educational responses in complex Indigenous language contact ecologies

Denise Angelo and Nina Carter (Australian National University)

PART FOUR

The Caribbean and North America

Chapter 9

School rules: Language education policies and practices in the Creole-speaking Caribbean

Hubert Devonish, Paula Daley-Morris, and Karen Carpenter (University of the West Indies, Jamaica)

Chapter 10

Minority languages in Canada in the context of official bilingualism

Thomas Ricento (University of Calgary, Canada)

Chapter 11

Trouble on the frontier: The perils of persisting colonial language policies in Canada

Jessica Ball (University of Victoria, Canada)

Chapter 12

Long-term English learners and language education policy

Jenna Cushing-Leubner and Kendall A. King (University of Minnesota, USA)

Chapter 13

Translanguaging frameworks for teachers: Macro and micro perspectives

Ofelia GarcĂ­a and Sarah Hesson (City University of New York, USA)

PART FIVE

Europe

Chapter 14

Rethinking multilingualism: Trajectories in policy, pedagogy and research in the UK

Jim Anderson and Vicky Macleroy (Goldsmiths, University of London, UK)

Chapter 15

Dialects, education and social change in Malta and Gozo

Antoinette Camilleri Grima (University of Malta)

Chapter 16

The sociolinguistic and educational landscape of Cyprus

Androula Yiakoumetti (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

Index

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243 267 287 295

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Jim Anderson (Goldsmiths, University of London) is Senior Lecturer in Languages in Education in the Department of Educational Studies. His work focuses on theories and methods of second-language learning, including Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), multilingualism and new literacies, and language policy.

He led the introduction of the Secondary PGCE in Arabic, Bengali, Mandarin, Panjabi and Urdu at Goldsmiths and was coordinator of this course until 2014. He now teaches primarily on the department’s MA course in Culture, Language and Identity. He also supervises students pursuing higher degrees and works on certificate courses for teachers of Arabic and Chinese under the Goldsmiths Teacher Centre.

Denise Angelo (Australian National University) is an educator, language teacher, a specialist in English as an Additional Language curriculum and a linguist who has worked in primary, secondary and tertiary education contexts. She has worked with teams teaching traditional Aboriginal languages across northern Australia; training Aboriginal interpreters and translators; researching contact language varieties; developing resources and building educators’ capacity to support Indigenous students with complex ‘language contact’ backgrounds in English-medium classrooms. Contact language varieties – their historical and present day development, their role for communities, families and individuals, the recognition and attitudes assigned to them and their impact in education – are a particular research interest.

Kingsley Arkorful (Education Development Center Inc.) is a Principal International Technical Advisor currently engaged in programme design and development initiatives for education programmes focused on literacy, curriculum material development, teacher-training and education management in sub-Saharan Africa.

He holds a PhD in International Education and Development from the University of Sussex. His current research interests and work are in the areas of education programme development in sub-Sahara Africa, mother-tongue instruction, formal school curriculum development and implementation, complementary/alternative education programmes, literacy acceleration and access to education. He has headed and taught in a primary school, taught in secondary schools and in a teacher training college, and also served as an examiner for the West African Examination Council.

He has worked and travelled in all regions of Ghana and has worked as a resource person for a number of NGOs locally and internationally related to Education and Community Development, and has acted as the Programme Coordinator for the World Bank funded Schooling Improvement Fund. He was the Associate Director v

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for Field Activities for the USAID funded Community School Alliances Project and the Deputy Team Leader/Senior Technical Advisor for the Education Quality for All (EQUALL) Project funded by USAID. Jessica Ball (University of Victoria) is a Professor in the School of Child and Youth Care at the University of Victoria, Canada. She has worked on three continents at all levels of education including early childhood formal and informal preschools, primary and secondary school, and tertiary education. Her programme of scholarship, Early Childhood Development Intercultural Partnerships, involves child and family development projects brought forward by Indigenous and minority organisations and communities around the world. She is well-known internationally for her work on capacity-building in early childhood education and in the area of mother-tongue based multilingual education. She has published over 100 journal articles and book chapters and several books.

Birgit Brock-Utne (University of Oslo) is a Professor in Education and Development who also works as a consultant around the globe. She has been a Professor at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, for four years. She has been a Visiting Professor at several universities in the US, at the University of Otago in New Zealand, the University of Hiroshima in Japan, the European University of Peace in Austria and the Universitat Jaume Primero in Spain. In 2011 she was the President of BAICE (the British Association of Comparative and International Education).

She was the Norwegian coordinator of the Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa project.

Antoinette Camilleri Grima (University of Malta) is Professor of Applied Linguistics. After her postgraduate studies at the University of Edinburgh, she coordinated international projects on linguistic diversity in education as part of the Council of Europe programme, and has worked as a linguistic administrator at the EU Council of Ministers. She has international experience as a language teacher, particularly having taught Maltese as a foreign language to EU translators, and has published regularly on bilingual education, dialects in education, and code-switching as a pedagogical resource in the classroom.

Nina Carter (Australian National University) has worked in a range of contexts in Australia and overseas in the field of language teaching, English as an Additional Language, curriculum development and teacher training. She has worked in classroom-based and departmental roles across primary, secondary and tertiary sectors.

Her research interests include teachers’ understandings and expressions of their students’ additional language development, especially in contact language contexts, and classroom and system-wide responses to the provision of language teaching alongside curriculum content.

Jenna Cushing-Leubner (University of Minnesota) is a PhD student in Second Languages and Cultures Education at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction

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at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches and conducts research on English as an Additional Language and Heritage Language maintenance programmes in K-12 schools, teacher dispositions, and teacher education and professional development towards culturally responsive teaching and academic plurilingual development. She holds a BA in Linguistics and German from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire and an MA in TESOL. Cushing-Leubner is the author of an English as an Additional Language textbook series for Austrian secondary schools and has conducted research on educational systems and student learning in the US, Austria and Turkey.

Ofelia García (City University of New York) is Professor in the PhD programmes of Urban Education and of Hispanic and Luso-Brazilian Literatures and Languages at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Among her recent books are: Bilingual Education in the Twenty-First Century: A Global Perspective; Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education (with Li Wei), Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, I and II (with J. A. Fishman); Educating Emergent Bilinguals (with J. Kleifgen); Additive Schooling in Subtractive Times (with L. Bartlett); Negotiating Language Policies in Schools (with K. Menken); Imagining Multilingual Schools (with T. Skutnabb-Kangas and M. Torres-Guzmán), and A Reader in Bilingual Education (with C. Baker). She is the Associate General Editor of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language and the co-editor of Language Policy.

Sarah Hesson (City University of New York) is a doctoral candidate in the Urban Education programme at the CUNY Graduate Center where she is an Enhanced Chancellor’s Fellow. Her research interests include bilingual education policy and pedagogy and social justice education. Sarah is also an Adjunct Lecturer at Hunter College in the Bilingual Education Graduate Program. The courses she has taught include Foundations of Bilingual Education, Using Home Language and English to teach Content to Emergent Bilingual Students, and Bilingual Practicum. She has also served as a field supervisor for new teachers. Previously she received a Master’s degree in Bilingual Childhood Education from Fordham University through the NYC Teaching Fellows Program and worked at the NYC Department of Education as a bilingual teacher at both the elementary and middle school levels for six years.

Ritu Jain (National University of Singapore) is a doctoral candidate in the South Asian Studies Program at the National University of Singapore. Her interest lies in aspects of language management among Indians in more recent transnational/ diasporic societies. In her dissertation, she is exploring the influence of language ideologies in shaping language practices among the non-Tamil Indian language speakers in Singapore. In particular, her focus is Hindi, its status within and beyond Singapore, and how it frames second-language choices of the five other Indian languages that have been given semi-official status there. She also teaches a range of diaspora studies, language and communication-related undergraduate modules at various tertiary institutions in Singapore.

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Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu (Howard University) is Professor of Linguistics and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English. He holds an MA and a PhD in linguistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has also received a Fulbright Award and a Howard University Distinguished Faculty Research Award. He has taught at the National University of Singapore, the University of Swaziland and the University of Natal in Durban, South Africa, where he was Director of the Linguistics Programme. His research interests include language policy and planning, code-switching, New Englishes, language and identity, and African linguistics. He has published numerous articles in refereed journals and books, and is the author of the monograph The Language Planning Situation in South Africa (2001), co-editor of Language and Institution in Africa (2000), editor of special issues for Multilingua 17 (1998), International Journal of the Sociology of Language 144 (2000), World Englishes 21 (2002), and Language Problems and Language Planning 28 (2004) and is Polity Editor for the series Current Issues in Language Planning.

Kendall A. King (University of Minnesota) is Professor of Second Languages and Cultures Education and Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota, where she teaches and conducts research on language policy, sociolinguistics and multilingualism. She has held academic and research posts at New York University, Georgetown University, and the Center for Research on Bilingualism at Stockholm University. She holds a BA from the University of California, an MA in TESOL and a PhD in Educational Linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been widely published in scholarly journals such as Applied Linguistics, Discourse Studies and Journal of Language, Identity and Education, as well as in edited collections published by Cambridge University Press, Routledge, Multilingual Matters and others. She is an editor of the journal Language Policy.

Vicky Macleroy (Goldsmiths, University of London) is a Senior Lecturer in English in Education in the Department of Educational Studies. Vicky’s expertise is in language development and her doctorate research was in the area of multiliteracies and applied linguistics. She is Head of the MA Writer/Teacher course, which is a joint programme across the departments of Educational Studies and English and Comparative Literature, and is a tutor on the new MA in Multilingualism, Linguistics and Education programme. She is joint co-ordinator of the PGCE English programme and a committee member of the Research Centre for Language, Culture and Learning at Goldsmiths. She has co-directed with Jim Anderson a two-year project (2012–14) on multilingual digital storytelling funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

Ajit Mohanty (National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium) is Chief Advisor within the National Multilingual Education Resource Consortium and, formerly, Professor and ICSSR National Fellow within Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was a Fulbright Visiting Professor (Columbia University), Fulbright Senior Scholar (University of Wisconsin), and Killam Scholar (University of Alberta). With over

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140 publications including seven books in the areas of psycholinguistics, multilingualism and multilingual education focusing on education, poverty and disadvantage among linguistic minorities, he has written chapters on language acquisition and bilingualism in the Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology (second edition) and on multilingual education in India in Encyclopaedia of Language and Education and in Encyclopaedia of Applied Linguistics, 2013, and is author of Multilingual Education for Social Justice (Mohanty, Panda, Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas, eds). His other books include Bilingualism in a Multilingual Society and Psychology of Poverty and Disadvantage. He is a Fellow and past President of the National Academy of Psychology, India, and a Fellow of the Association of Psychological Science, USA. He developed the Multilingual Education Policy for Nepal (with Tove SkutnabbKangas) and also for the state of Odisha, India.

Martha Qorro (University of Dar es Salaam) is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Communication Studies at the University of Dar es Salaam (UDSM).

She obtained her Doctoral Degree at UDSM in 1999. In 1997 she and Dr. Zaline Roy-Campbell co-authored Language Crisis in Tanzania: The Myth of English versus Education, published by Mkuki na Nyota in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She has also co-edited nine LOITASA books between 2002 and 2012. She was the Dean of Students at UDSM from 2008 to 2012, and the Acting Director of the Confucius Institute at UDSM between 2013 and 2014. Her research interests are language in education, language in society and Children’s writing.

Minati Panda (Jawaharlal Nehru University) is a Professor and currently the Chairperson in the Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies. She is also the Director of NMRC in JNU. Thomas Ricento (University of Calgary) is Professor and Research Chair in English as an Additional Language. Prior to his position in Canada, he was Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Texas, San Antonio. He has published widely in the field of language policy, minority language education and English in a global context. Recent publications include An Introduction to Language Policy (2005); Political Economy and English as a ‘Global’ Language (Critical Multilingualism Studies, 2012); Language Policy and Political Economy: English in a Global Context (2015); Language Policy and Planning: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (forthcoming).

He is founding co-editor of the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education. He has twice been a Fulbright Professor (Colombia and Costa Rica), and has been a visiting professor at universities in Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Chile, among other countries. He was Director of English Language Programmes at the Japan Center for Michigan Universities, Hikone, Japan, 1989–91.

Farzad Sharifian (Monash University) is Professor and Director of Language and Society. He is the author of Cultural Conceptualisations and Language (2011), the (founding) Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Language and Culture,

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and the editor of The Routledge Handbook of Language and Culture (2015). He has made significant contributions to the development of Cultural Linguistics as a multidisciplinary area of research. He has also applied the approach of Cultural Linguistics to several areas of research, including World Englishes, intercultural communication, and language and politics.

Carolyn Temple Adger (Center for Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC) is a Senior Fellow, and director of the Language Education and Academic Development division and the Language in Society division. She holds a PhD in sociolinguistics from Georgetown University and an MS in English education from the University of Maryland. Her research has focused on language in education, including classroom discourse and teachers’ professional talk. Her applied linguistics work has addressed language and literacy learning in culturally diverse schools in the US, dialects in US schools, and biliteracy in developing countries. She has published widely in these areas, and has worked directly with teachers and others involved in educating language-minority children. Her books include Dialects in Schools and Communities (co-authored with Wolfram and Christian, 1999; second edition, 2007; third edition, forthcoming), and What Teachers Need to Know About Language (co-edited with Snow and Christian). She is a former teacher.

Viniti Vaish (Nanyang Technological University) is Associate Professor within the university’s National Institute of Education. She teaches courses on bilingualism and biliteracy and has published most recently in Cambridge Journal of Education, International Journal of Multilingualism and Language and Education.

Lionel Wee (National University of Singapore) is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature. He sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Applied Linguistics, English World-Wide, Sociolinguistic Studies and Multilingual Margins. His books include Language Without Rights (2011), Style, Identity and Literacy (with Chris Stroud, 2011) and Markets of English (with Joseph Park, 2012), Consumption, Rights and States: Comparing Global Cities in Asia and the US (with Ann Brooks, 2014) and The Language of Organizational Styling (2015).

Androula Yiakoumetti (Oxford Brookes University) is an applied linguist whose research focuses on regional and social variation within linguistic systems and, more specifically, on the implications of such variation for education. She is interested in the sociolinguistic aspects of linguistic variation and works within the research fields of multidialectism and multilingualism, second-language acquisition, and language-teacher development. Her publications span a variety of language issues including bidialectism, language attitudes, learning English as a foreign language, and language-teacher training.

SERIES EDITORS’ PREFACE

The manifold dimensions of the field of teacher education are increasingly attracting the attention of researchers, educators, classroom practitioners and policymakers, while awareness has also emerged of the blurred boundaries between these categories of stakeholders in the discipline. One notable feature of contemporary theory, research and practice in this field is consensus on the value of exploring the diversity of international experience for understanding the dynamics of educational development and the desired outcomes of teaching and learning. A second salient feature has been the view that theory and policy development in this field need to be evidencedriven and attentive to diversity of experience. Our aim in this series is to give space to in-depth examination and critical discussion of educational development in context with a particular focus on the role of the teacher and of teacher education. While significant, disparate studies have appeared in relation to specific areas of enquiry and activity, the Cambridge Education Research Series provides a platform for contributing to international debate by publishing within one overarching series monographs and edited collections by leading and emerging authors tackling innovative thinking, practice and research in education.

The series consists of three strands of publication representing three fundamental perspectives. The Teacher Education strand focuses on a range of issues and contexts and provides a re-examination of aspects of national and international teacher education systems or analysis of contextual examples of innovative practice in initial and continuing teacher education programmes in different national settings. The International Education Reform strand examines the global and country-specific moves to reform education and xi

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particularly teacher development, which is now widely acknowledged as central to educational systems development. Books published in the Language Education strand address the multilingual context of education in different national and international settings, critically examining among other phenomena the first, second and foreign language ambitions of different national settings and innovative classroom pedagogies and language teacher education approaches that take account of linguistic diversity.

We are very pleased to include Multilingualism and Language in Education: Sociolinguistic and Pedagogical Perspectives from Commonwealth Countries in our series as part of the collection of books framed within the language education strand. It provides a timely stimulus for reflection on the importance of research-informed understandings about linguistic and sociolinguistic diversity and on the need for context-sensitive educational policy-making to take account of this diversity. The chapters in this volume remind us how, beyond the rhetoric, the Commonwealth of Nations is dependent on a common wealth of languages.

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Michael Evans and Colleen McLaughlin

INTRODUCTION Language policy and practice with a focus on Commonwealth contexts

Androula Yiakoumetti (Oxford Brookes University, UK)

In a modern world characterised by globalisation, transnationalism, transmigration and super-diversity, there exists a pressing need to critically examine language in education, language policies, the role of English and linguistic diversity. This volume explores language issues primarily in the linguistically diverse settings of Commonwealth countries in an effort to provide answers to the following question: in settings that are characterised by language power relations based on economic and political factors rather than linguistic processes, how can language education be optimised? Countries within the Commonwealth furnish some of the most instructive instances of languages that have been used as instruments of empowerment and oppression, cultural liberation, religious evangelism, and to unify, isolate and/or separate ethnic groups. Indeed, language has been at the centre of most political, historical, economic and educational decision-making in these linguistically rich and complex settings.

This volume brings together work carried out in a number of Commonwealth countries, including Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Malta, Singapore, Tanzania and the UK. In addition, to these Commonwealth nations, two chapters draw on research carried out on emergent bilingual learners (whose first language is not English) in the US. The research discussed in these two chapters has profound relevance to the great many Commonwealth contexts in which English is the language of the majority.

The essays included here highlight the suggestions and practical efforts undertaken in these contexts to incorporate linguistic diversity into education and to promote multilingualism. The authors examine language in xiii

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education and discuss both historical and current practices. They argue for the promotion of Indigenous languages, minority languages, Creoles and nonstandard varieties in formal education, and they discuss what works and what does not. The authors’ recommendations reflect the enormous changes that educational sociolinguistic research has brought about in the twentyfirst century: diglossic compartmentalisation that was at the heart of educational practices in the twentieth century is now called into question and bilingual and multilingual practises in today’s globalised world are seen as dynamic (García et al. 2012). As Pauwels (2014) argues, the linguistic phenomena associated with super-diversity are resulting in a paradigm shift in the study of multilingualism. Reflecting this shift, the majority of the contributors question traditional nation-state ideologies and the idea that multilinguals’ various languages should be treated as autonomous systems.

Instead, many focus on translanguaging practices and call for utilisation of multilinguals’ entire linguistic repertoires in education.

The chapters are presented according to geographical context and adhere to the following order: Africa, South Asia, Australia, the Caribbean and North America, and Europe. Commencing with the sociolinguistic and language education landscapes of African Commonwealth countries, Nkonko Kamwangamalu focuses on the juxtaposition of English and African languages. He investigates the privileged status held by English compared to African languages in educational systems and explains that a monolingual model is prevalent which posits an early exit of African languages from education in favour of English. In essence, subtractive bilingualism is widely practiced in that African languages are used as media of instruction only for the first three years of primary education; they are subsequently replaced

by English as the sole medium of instruction. Kamwangamalu suggests that language-education planning needs a paradigm shift: rather than critiquing inherited colonial policies, he proposes Prestige Planning for African languages. This proposal entails associating African languages with an economic value on the labour market and requiring academic skills in these languages for access to employment. The focus is on the reception (and not on the production) of language planning.

Birgit Brock-Utne and Martha Qorro work within the context of multilingual Tanzania. They are in direct agreement with Kamwangamalu’s suggestion that African languages need to be associated with contexts which are generally reserved for English. They focus on education and argue that local languages are the most appropriate for use as languages of instruction for early literacy. They acknowledge that the multiplicity of these languages, the lack of teaching materials, and the need to train teachers to use these

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languages as media of instruction, are challenges that need to be overcome.

Nevertheless, education in African languages is the way forward if knowledge and skills are to be effectively disseminated to the wider public.

Echoing Brock-Utne’s and Qorro’s sentiments, Kingsley Arkorful and Carolyn Temple Adger view the utilisation of local languages as integral to successful language instruction in Ghana. The authors initially review the educational language policy in Ghana and highlight that (i) only 11 out of 70 languages indigenous to Ghana are approved for use in formal schooling, and that (ii) the policy is non-committal when it comes to the use of a Ghanaian language as the medium of instruction. They identify that, even though a Ghanaian language is recommended as the medium of instruction for early grades (P1–3), practically, English is the language of reading and writing since all the books are written in English. They subsequently raise a legitimate question about how children who speak languages other than English can gain access to quality primary education when English maintains a superlative position. For the purposes of their empirical study, they contrast state education to a complementary education programme known as School for Life and conclude that the latter is vastly superior. The unique characteristic of this programme is that the sole language of instruction is Dagbani, and lesson content is culturally relevant. This programme is testament to the benefits of mother-tongue based education as, after just nine months, graduates of the programme perform as well as students who have completed three years of state schooling on standardised tests.

Ajit Mohanty and Minati Panda work within the sociolinguistic and educational landscapes of India and focus on the language education of tribal communities. They explain that India is a unique setting in that it is the country with the highest number of endangered languages and also the fourth most linguistically diverse country in the world. Individuals need multiple languages as one is simply insufficient to meet the requirements of the diverse community. Mohanty and Panda make the case that, compared with their peers, tribal children face greater language challenges in the school arena: because their mother tongue is not the language of instruction, they have difficulty comprehending the school language (the dominant regional or state language), and even more difficulty with English (the third language). The reality that tribal children speak languages considered to have low status has been linked to poor academic achievement which, ultimately, produces and perpetuates poverty. This result is a consequence of a language hierarchy in India which views English as the most preferred language in education, followed by regional majority languages and, finally, ending with Indigenous and tribal minority languages. The authors argue for the use of

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tribal languages as media of instruction and explain that, unless this happens, ensuring inclusive education and social equity, as envisaged in the Commonwealth Charter, is clearly not on the horizon.

As can be seen from the first four chapters, concerns relating to the status of English compared to that of local languages are common in both African and Indian settings. The authors acknowledge that social and educational changes ought to take place which would see local languages acquire a more elevated status, but achieving such changes is no easy feat. Local languages have historically been treated as unequal to English, but with careful planning, there is cause for hope that positive changes can be implemented.

Ritu Jain and Lionel Wee question the notion of language community and critique the Singaporean language policy in relation to its treatment of English and the Indian community’s various mother tongues. They highlight the gap between stated government ideologies and those of the Indian community and make the case that the languages that the Indian population in Singapore choose to adopt in education are based on Indians’ views of the instrumental advantages of linguistic varieties and their own future trajectories. For instance, many Indians choose to adopt Hindi (and not Tamil, which is the officially recognised mother tongue of the Indian community) because it is considered as a pan-Indian language (it is India’s official language), and is thus associated with financial success and career development.

Community membership is a comparatively minor factor when it comes to language-maintenance decisions as Indians make choices irrespective of their own ethnic or linguistic affiliations. Importantly, the language preferences of Singapore’s Indian community have required the government to reconsider the position (which represented an erroneous generalisation) that Tamil is the sole mother tongue of a notably heterogeneous Indian population.

Viniti Vaish also works within the Singaporean context but focuses on Malay speakers to explore the role of students’ home language in the English classroom. Via an intervention study, the performance of students who were exposed to translanguaging practices (which involved students’ entire linguistic repertoires) was compared with that of students who were exposed solely to the target language, English. The findings clearly demonstrate the benefits of the former approach: when students were scaffolded to utilise their home language, the quantity of their speech as well as the number of questions posed by them increased, and both teachers and students asked more speculative questions. Vaish provides a well-contextualised empirical demonstration that monolingual instruction for bilingual and multilingual speakers is not as productive as instruction that harnesses the speakers’ entire linguistic repertoires.

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Looking at Australia, Farzad Sharifian focuses on the education of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who speak Aboriginal English.

He suggests that teachers of such students ought to receive training in language awareness so that they become familiar with key differences between Australian Aboriginal English and Standard Australian English. A survey on the health, wellbeing and education of Aboriginal English-speaking children provides the basis for recommendations for deploying bidialectal learning and teaching that acknowledges the symbolic representations of each variety.

He cautions that, frequently, Aboriginal students’ performance is misinterpreted, and calls for the creation of alternative assessments that take into account students’ entire linguistic repertoires.

Denise Angelo and Nina Carter provide a very rich picture of the complex shifting ‘langscapes’ of Queensland, Australia. Echoing Farzad Sharifian, the authors highlight the need for educators to acquire professional capacities that counter stereotypical policy and social views towards Indigenous multilingual students’ linguistic repertoires and overall learning in classrooms that use Standard Australian English as the exclusive medium of instruction. They explain that the predominantly non-Indigenous education workforce is mostly unprepared for teaching contact-language speakers. They view language awareness, progression from the monolingual mindset (which currently dominates), and acceptance of multilingual speakers’ relative proficiencies in each of their languages to be integral factors that enable educators to best support their students. Importantly, the authors note that the shifting langscapes of Queensland are comparable to other Commonwealth contexts were language-contact processes have resulted in various English-lexified creoles and related varieties.

Producing remarkably similar recommendations, albeit in a markedly different context, Hubert Devonish, Paula Daley-Morris and Karen Carpenter argue in favour of contact-language use in the education of Creole-speaking Caribbean. In response to the Commonwealth Charter’s commitment to equality and respect for the protection and promotion of cultural rights, the authors ask how these rights could be promoted in contexts were the native Creole is largely excluded from education. To critically evaluate Jamaican school-based approaches to language education, they examine Jamaican pupils’ writing samples in the texting medium and in the school English medium. They demonstrate that, for texting, pupils employ Jamaican Creole as a medium of written communication in a manner that visually distinguishes it from writing in school English. The authors favour bilingual instruction, which is currently unsupported by ministries of education across the Caribbean, and conclude that the equity and justice issues raised by the

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Commonwealth Charter still need to be properly addressed in language education policies and practices.

Thomas Ricento interrogates the current educational practices in Canada, which fall short of fostering multilingualism and multiculturalism. The historical basis for the official hegemony (conveyed via exclusive federal recognition) of English and French in a Canadian nation that is immensely multilingual and multicultural is set out and serves as a salutatory lesson. The fact that, in Canada, educational policy is primarily the responsibility of provinces and territories and that there is no national educational policy and curriculum creates a particular issue, one of problematic implementation of bilingual programmes at national level, despite federal government support for bilingualism and multiculturalism. A common and very undesirable outcome of the current Canadian educational reality is that those who are neither natively Anglophone nor Francophone find themselves marginalised.

Jessica Ball outlines how, in Canadian education, aspirations such as those set out in the Commonwealth Charter and commitments to the Millenium Development Goals are hollow without associated acknowledgement and support for linguistic diversity in Canadian education. She discusses the valuable resource that the mother tongue of minority-language speakers represents and argues for mother-tongue-based multilingual education. Focusing on Indigenous languages, she argues that the time has come to elevate them to equal standing alongside the existing colonial languages at federal, provincial and territorial levels. The Canadian context provides convincing evidence that only by granting this equal standing, and by allowing children to learn in their mother tongues until they are fully literate, can the aspirations of the Commonwealth Charter become a reality.

In a discussion of policy in the US that has implications for Commonwealth contexts in which English is the essential language for academic success, Jenna Cushing-Leubner and Kendall King undertake an examination of two opposing policy frameworks implemented in California and New York that are designed for students who are long-term English learners. They suggest that the New York framework (which is more inclusive and which focuses on integrative multilingualism) is more appropriate than the widely publicised California framework. Their conclusion is to recommend those same translanguaging practices that are advocated in many other instances within this volume.

Working within the theoretical frameworks of language management and translanguaging and drawing on the practices of two teachers based in New York, Ofelia García and Sarah Hesson investigate how students’

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Introduction

translanguaging practices can be fostered and enhanced. The students are seen as the language experts. This chapter highlights the key role of teachers in managing students’ meaningful language learning and teaching via the use of their entire language repertoires.

Jim Anderson and Vicky Macleroy focus on how multilingualism has manifested itself in recent years in the UK. Due to enormous population movement, the UK is an immensely multilingual setting. Its education, however, is dominated by monolingual assumptions. There is currently no official educational provision for emergent bilingual students whose achievement is measured on their English performance alone. The maintenance of community languages is viewed as the responsibility of the minority communities themselves, and they have resorted to running voluntary community-based weekend schools. The authors emphasise that such schools are in opposition to monolingual mainstream education as they celebrate bilingualism and bilingual identity. The authors conclude by advising that future education policies should take into account speakers’ fluid identities.

Antoinette Camilleri Grima focuses on the sociolinguistic and educational landscapes of Malta and its sister island Gozo. Dialects on the island of Malta have been declining in education and beyond, whereas dialects in Gozo have remained vital. The author draws attention to the very interesting setting of Gozo by explaining that, unlike many children worldwide who speak a dialect at home that is different from the language of schooling, Gozitan children perform above the national average. This is because dialects in this specific setting are held in high esteem. This setting is very encouraging as it demonstrates that when dialects are highly regarded, they provide their speakers with benefits associated with bilingualism.

In the final chapter, I focus on the sociolinguistic and educational landscapes of Cyprus and critique the most recent educational curriculum.

Although the new curriculum represents a promising step towards acknowledging that the local Greek Cypriot dialect is a systematic variety, it still fails to promote linguistic diversity in education. Minority languages do not make an appearance and the educational language, the standard variety of Greek, continues to be presented somewhat disingenuously as the students’ native variety.

Collectively, the authors of this volume acknowledge the mismatch between what should ideally happen in the classrooms of linguistically complex settings such as those in the Commonwealth, and what policies have traditionally prescribed. They show that the historical devaluation of nonstandard, Indigenous and minority linguistic varieties on the whole tends

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Androula Yiakoumetti

to disadvantage those who have the greatest need for support and protection within the educational system. Speakers of such low-status languages very often have their languages and cultures threatened by power-associated languages and cultures (Yiakoumetti 2014). This threat undoubtedly perpetuates hierarchical relationships.

Those authors who explore the role of English both in education and in society at large conclude that, in some cases, access to English still remains tied to class and social power. Of course, one cannot dismiss citizens’ aspirations in contemporary postcolonial settings: it is not unreasonable for young citizens to wish for their utilitarian expectations and desires for social empowerement to be met as they try to negotiate the complex forces of globalisation (Roy 2014). At the same time, local languages ought to be preserved and celebrated as they are part of their identities. If local languages were to be associated with prestige along the lines suggested by Nkonko Kamwangamalu, the solidification of the elite status of English would decelerate. English and local languages could then co-exist harmoniously, and the social differences that result because of educational barriers would equilibrate. The resulting situation would be one that reflects all the benefits associated with multilingualism.

The research from the diverse contexts reported herein demonstrates that an education that promotes children’s mother tongues and cultural identities is markedly more beneficial than an education that suppresses home languages and, consequently, perpetuates social injustice. Antoinette Camilleri Grima’s account of the Gozitan dialects unquestionably establishes that when dialects are valued and their use is not discouraged in education, they can provide their speakers with additional benefits. Similarly, Kingsley Arkorful and Carolyn Temple Adger show that, when children are educated in their native Dagbani, their performance benefits. Finally, Viniti Vaish’s account of Singaporean Malay-speaking students’ performance is proof that mothertongue based education is beneficial: students who were exposed to Malay in education outperformed students who were exposed to English alone.

In answering the question of optimising language education in linguistically diverse settings, this volume shows that both low-status and traditionally prestigious varieties ought to be concurrently used for ideal educational outcomes, and therefore argues in favour of multilingualism and multiculturalism. Nkonko Kamwangamalu’s call for a paradigm shift in language education planning is especially timely. The association of local languages, and not just dominant languages, with economic and academic access would initiate a process of mitigating perceived language inequalities. Only then would learners be in a position to trust education and to benefit maximally from it.

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Introduction

In spite of geographical and linguistic differences, Commonwealth nations share strong democratic values relating to human rights and inclusiveness.

For the first time in its history, the Commonwealth has created a unitary document: the Commonwealth Charter (2013). Affirming diversity, the Commonwealth Charter outlines the core values of the organisation and the aspirations of its members. The recent pledge by Commonwealth education ministers to ensure that a strong Commonwealth voice informs and shapes post-2015 global development goals (Commonwealth Secretariat 2012) demonstrates the organisation’s willingness to foster better education based on the principles of access, equity and quality.

This volume is timely: the authors make a clear and unequivocal case that the aspirations set out in the Commonwealth Charter and the commitments to the post-2015 Millennium Development Goals are entirely contingent upon the concomitant delivery of the meaningful promotion of linguistic diversity in education. If we are to make a change for the better, policy decision-makers will need to rethink education along the lines of social inclusion for all. Given that education is perhaps the most critical venue for consolidating linguistic ideology, consideration of language should be a first priority when seeking change.

References Commonwealth (2013). The Commonwealth Charter. London: The Stationery Office Limited.

Commonwealth Secretariat (2012). Commonwealth Ministerial Working Group on the Post2015 Development Framework for Education. London: Commonwealth Secretariat.

García, O., Flores, N. and Woodley, H. H. (2012). Transgressing Monolingualism and Bilingual Dualities: Translanguaging Pedagogies. In A. Yiakoumetti, ed, Harnessing Linguistic Variation to Improve Education. Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang.

Pauwels, A. (2014) The Teaching of Languages at University in the Context of Super-diversity.

International Journal of Multilingualism 11 (3), 307–19.

Roy, S. (2014). Pedagogic Predicament. Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies.

Yiakoumetti, A. (2014). Language Education in Our Globalised Classrooms: Recommendations on Providing for Equal Language Rights. In E. Esch and M. Solly, eds, Language Education and the Challenges of Globalisation: Sociolinguistic Issues. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

PART ONE: Africa

1 THE SOCIOLINGUISTIC AND LANGUAGE EDUCATION LANDSCAPES OF AFRICAN COMMONWEALTH COUNTRIES1 Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu (Howard University, USA)

Introduction Commenting on the relationship between colonial powers and their former colonies, Fishman (1996, 5) says that ‘although the lowering of one flag and the raising of another may indicate the end of colonial status, these acts do not necessarily indicate the end of imperialist privilege in neo-colonial disguise’. There is perhaps no better evidence of this than the privileged status and role of English vis-à-vis African languages in the educational systems of African Commonwealth countries. Although British colonial rule in Africa ended over 50 years ago, African Commonwealth countries continue to put the former colonial language, English, on a pedestal, especially in education.

This chapter discusses the dominance of English in education against the linguistic diversity that is characteristic of African Commonwealth countries.

First, it describes the sociolinguistic and language education landscapes of these countries. Then it contrasts the position of English in education in African Commonwealth countries with its position in the educational systems of European countries. Drawing on the literature, it shows that European countries use language ecology or the ‘English-Plus’ model particularly in secondary education (Seidlhofer, Breiteneder and Pitzl 2006). Unlike those in Europe, African Commonwealth countries practice a monolingual model, which posits an early exit of African languages from the education system in favour of English. In the subsequent section, the chapter discusses the ideologies that underpin language-in-education practices in African Commonwealth countries, with a focus on the ideology of the nation-state and the ideology of socioeconomic development. I argue that these ideologies, though arguably dated 1

2

Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu

in Europe, continue to inform language practices in the educational systems of Commonwealth countries. In the next and final section, the chapter suggests ways in which English and African languages can co-exist productively in education. In particular, it calls for Prestige Planning (Haarmann 1990) for African languages not only to promote linguistic diversity in education but also, and more importantly, to ensure that African languages become, like English, a viable medium of instruction and an instrument of upward social mobility.

The call for Prestige Planning for African languages is made against the background of theoretical developments in language economics (Grin 1996; Vaillancourt and Grin 2000). This is a field of study whose focus is on the interplay between linguistic and economic variables. Understanding this interplay, remark Grin, Sfreddo and Vaillaincourt (2010, 140) in the context of language practices in the corporate sector, ‘is relevant to language policy, since this understanding sheds light on why multinational firms, for instance, require foreign language skills’. In the context of African Commonwealth countries, understanding this relationship between linguistic and economic variables can help us explain why there is such a high demand for English language skills but virtually none for African languages on Africa’s labour market.

There is, therefore, arguably no field of study that is better equipped than language economics to explain the dominance of English in the educational systems of African Commonwealth countries. Within the framework of language economics, linguistic products such as language, language varieties, utterances and accents are seen not only as goods or commodities to which the market assigns a value, but as signs of wealth or capital, which receive their value only in relation to a market characterised by a particular law of price formation (Bourdieu 1991, 66–7). The market value of a linguistic capital such as language is determined in relation to other linguistic products in the planetary economy (Coulmas 1992, 77–85). It is, as Gideon Strauss (1996, 9) notes, an index of the functional appreciation of the language by the relevant community.

I argue that until African languages are associated with a market value, English will continue to dominate the educational systems of African Commonwealth countries, much as it did in the colonial era. But how can African languages be assigned a market value to make them instrumentally competitive with English at least on the local labour market? I will address this question in the last section of this chapter, where I propose Prestige Planning for African languages.

But first, let us look at linguistic diversity in African Commonwealth countries to provide the background against which the proposal of Prestige Planning for African languages will be made.

3

The sociolinguistc and language education landscapes of African Commonwealth countries

Linguistic diversity and the linguistic landscapes of African Commonwealth countries There are 16 former British colonies in Africa. In addition, three African countries with no colonial ties to Britain, namely Namibia (1990), Mozambique (1995) and most recently Rwanda (2009), have become members of the association of Commonwealth countries. One original member state, Zimbabwe, left the association in 2003 due to land-related policy differences with Britain.

Aside from Rwanda, Lesotho and Swaziland, all African Commonwealth countries are multilingual. In other words, linguistic diversity is a given in these countries, much as it is in the rest of Africa and elsewhere in the world.

This diversity, however, is not reflected in the educational systems of African Commonwealth countries, let alone the educational systems in the African continent as a whole.

Table 1: The linguistic landscape of African Commonwealth countries2 S/N

Names

Population (2011)

Number of languages spoken

Official languages

1

Botswana

2

Cameroon

2 031 000

29

Setswana, English

20 030 000

280

French, English

3

Ghana

24 966 000

81

English

4

Kenya

41 610 000

67

Kiswahili, English

5

Lesotho

2 194 000

5

Sesotho, English

6

Malawi

15 381 000

16

English and Chicewa3

7

Mauritius

1 307 000

7

English

8

Mozambique

23 930 000

43

Portuguese

9

Namibia

2 324 000

30

English

10

Nigeria

162 471 000

522

English

11

Rwanda

10 943 000

3

Kinyarwanda, English

12

Seychelles

87 000

3

Creole, English, French

13

Sierra Leone

5 997 000

25

English

14

South Africa

50 460 000

28

Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Swati, Sotho, Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Northern Sotho, Southern Ndebele

15

Swaziland

1 203 000

5

siSwati, English

16

Tanzania

46 218 000

126

Kiswahili, English

17

Uganda

34 509 000

41

English, Kiswahili

18

Zambia

13 475 000

46

English

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Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu

On the contrary, and despite the post-independence euphoria to promote linguistic diversity in education, English-medium education remains the norm in African Commonwealth countries. This is because African Commonwealth countries perceive linguistic diversity as a curse, or what Davies (1996), following the biblical story of the Tower of Babel, describes as the fatality of Babel. According to this story, the descendants of Noah tried to build a tower leading to heaven, but their attempt ended in chaos when God confused the common language that enabled them to communicate and punished them by making them speak many different languages. As Muhlhausler (1996) observes, this story portraying linguistic diversity as divine punishment has dominated western thinking for centuries; with many people, including policymakers in former European colonies in Africa, believing that a multiplicity of languages is a problem. To address this problem, the African elite to whom power passed when colonialism ended have retained the former colonial language, English, as the sole medium of instruction in their respective countries’ educational systems. It is explained that English was retained because of what Blommaert (1996, 21) calls the ‘the efficiency argument’. In essence, the efficiency argument posits multilingualism as a problem that must be avoided at all costs to ensure the smooth running of the business of the state and promote national integration and economic development.

The efficiency argument can perhaps be entertained for multilingual African Commonwealth countries such as Nigeria, Cameroon and Tanzania, for instance, which have over a hundred languages spoken within their borders. However, the argument does not hold for monolingual African Commonwealth countries such as Swaziland, Lesotho and Rwanda, whose population is linguistically homogeneous. In Swaziland, Lesotho and Rwanda, everyone speaks only one Indigenous language, namely Siswati, Sesotho and Kinyarwanda, respectively. Therefore, drawing on Fardon and Furniss (1994), Blommaert argues convincingly that the efficiency argument is flawed. In particular, Blommaert quotes Fardon and Furniss (1994, 4), who say that whereas the former colonial powers strongly advocated efficiency among their former colonies, they now struggle hard to keep the European Union as multilingual as can be. Multilingualism in Europe is cherished as part of the unique European heritage, while it is depicted in Africa as one of the causes of underdevelopment and chaos.

In the next section, I will contrast the position of English in the educational systems of European countries with its position in the educational systems of

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The sociolinguistc and language education landscapes of African Commonwealth countries

African Commonwealth countries. The literature shows that European countries value and promote linguistic diversity by using additive bilingualism consisting of a national language and English. Hoffmann (2000) notes that in Germany, for instance, from the 1980s onwards, a growing number of schools use a form of bilingual education with German and English, referred to as Bilinguale Züge, where the children receive part of their lessons in English to meet the demands of economic globalisation. Unlike European countries, African Commonwealth countries practice subtractive bilingualism by using African languages as the medium of instruction only for the first three years of primary education, after which English takes over as the sole instructional medium.

Linguistic diversity in African Commonwealth countries and Europe As a result of the British colonial legacy, English dominates the educational systems of virtually all African Commonwealth countries. Bamgbose (2000) refers to this as a recurring decimal; that is, English turns up everywhere and dominates all the high-status domains, and certainly none more so than education. English is a recurring decimal not only in the educational systems of African Commonwealth countries but also in education in Europe. In their discussion of the spread of English in Europe, Seidlhofer, Breiteneder and Pitzl (2006, 3) remark that ‘English is everywhere, and we cannot avoid it. Whether chosen or mandatory, English is unquestionably the dominant language in secondary education.’ English dominates in Europe, much as it does in virtually all African Commonwealth countries, because of the instrumental value with which it is associated in the labour market, both local and global. The difference between the position of English in Europe and Africa is that, unlike African Commonwealth countries, in their educational systems the member states of the European Union use English in addition to rather than at the expense of their national languages. Indeed, one is not oblivious of the point that Hoffman (2000, 20) has made, namely that ‘in order to partake in Europe, i.e. both contribute to and benefit from the European Union politically, economically and socially, it is now highly desirable to have English’. In this regard, Seidlhofer, Breiteneder and Pitzl (2006) describe language practices in the European Union as an irresolvable dilemma. In particular, they remark that ‘in order to have a sense of community, a common language is needed, but having a common language is seen as a threat to European multilingualism. How can one promote a common language for

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Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu

the community while supporting equal rights for all community languages at the same time?’ (Seidlhofer, Breiteneder and Pitzl 2006, 24).

In spite of this apparent dilemma, it must be said that the European Union, the most influential institution in Europe, has taken many policy decisions since its creation on November 1, 1993 to ensure that no European language is discriminated against in the working of the Union. Phillipson (2003) lists a number of policies adopted by the European Union to promote linguistic diversity within its borders. These include, among others, the June 1995 European Council conclusions on Linguistic diversity and multilingualism in the European Union; the November 2001 Draft Council Resolution on the promotion of linguistic diversity and language-learning in the framework of the implementation of the objectives of the European Year of Languages; The January 2000 Declaration of Oegstgeest (the Netherlands) entitled ‘Moving away from a monolingual habitus’ and the June 2001 Vienna Manifesto on European Language Policies entitled ‘The cost of monolingualism’. In the 1995 European Council conclusions, for instance, the Council affirms the importance for the European Union of its linguistic diversity, which it says is an essential aspect of the European dimension and identity, and of the common cultural heritage. Also, it describes linguistic diversity as a source of employment, an asset for the Union’s influence in the outside world, and a resource that must be preserved and promoted in the Union (Phillipson 2003, 193).

There are other indicators that Europe has made every effort to accommodate its linguistic diversity. More recently, in 2010, the Linguist List (vol. 21, no. 736) announced the launch of meridium – Multilingualism in Europe as a Resource for Immigration Dialogue Initiative among the Universities of the Mediterranean. This was an international three-year project based at the University for Foreigners in Perugia, Italy, the aim of which was to study multilingualism in Mediterranean Europe and to raise an awareness of multilingualism and linguistic diversity.

The world has also taken notice of the fact that linguistic diversity is a feature of almost every country. Robinson and Varley (1998) list a number of conferences held in various parts of the world to promote linguistic diversity. Some of these include the 1996 Barcelona conference on Universal Declaration of Linguistic Rights; the June 1996 Hong Kong conference on language rights; and the 1995 Cameroon national conference on education, which sought to establish the principle that mother tongue of pupils should have a place in the educational system, to name a few. African Commonwealth countries are yet to come to terms with and promote linguistic diversity, especially in their

7

The sociolinguistc and language education landscapes of African Commonwealth countries

educational systems. I argue that failure to do so has its roots in the language ideologies the countries inherited from the former colonial power, Britain. In the next section, I will discuss two of these ideologies, namely the ideology of the nation-state and the ideology of socio-economic development.

Colonial ideologies, language-in-education practices and linguistic diversity The ideology of the nation-state

Schmidt (1998) has proposed a set of language policies including one, which he calls centralist policy, that might help us understand language-in-education practices in African Commonwealth countries both in the colonial as well as post-colonial era. A centralist policy has its roots in the ideology of the nation-state, which was popular in Europe at the time European powers conquered and divided up the African continent among themselves at the Berlin Conference of 1884–5 (Kamwangamalu 2013a, 546).

Inspired by the ideology of the nation-state, which by definition requires unitary symbols, among them ‘one nation’, ‘one language’, ‘one culture’, ‘one belief system’, ‘one religion’ and so on, the colonial authorities designed language policies that embraced monolingualism in a European language as the norm, treated the diversity of African languages as a problem and a threat to social order, and considered the African languages themselves as inadequate for advanced learning and socio-economic development (Whitehead 1995).

This is evident from the following quote by Sir Stanley River-Smith, who was Director of Education in the former British territory of Tanganyika, now Tanzania: The vast majority of African dialects . . . must be looked upon as educational cul de sacs [sic] . . . From a purely educational standpoint the decent internment of the vast majority of African dialects is to be desired, as they can never give the tribal unit access to any but a very limited literature (Whitehead 1995, 7). ‘To limit a native to a knowledge of his tribal dialects is to burden him with an economic handicap under which he will always be at a disadvantage when compared with others who, on account of geographical distribution or by means of education, are able to hold intercourse with Europeans or Asiatics’ (Whitehead 1995, 8).

Ager (2005) says that British authorities had contempt for linguistic diversity both at home and in their colonies overseas. With regard to the colonies, Ager says that British authorities held the view that no African was good

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Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu

enough to become English; however, unlike the Germans, who believed that no African was good enough to learn German; or the French, who believed that no African was civilised unless they gave up their languages and assimilated the French language, the British thought that there was some virtue in Africans being minimally anglicised (Mazrui 2013, 140). Accordingly, British authorities chose to train an elite in English who would provide a link between the rulers and the ruled (Bamgbose 2000). Also, they committed resources to the codification and promotion of Swahili in East Africa.

As a result, Kiswahili and English in Kenya, for instance, played a complementary role in official institutions of the state, with English dominating the higher levels of colonial administration and Kiswahili the lower administrative levels (Mazrui 2013). However, as Ager (2005, 1047) notes, ‘the thought never entered anyone’s head that the higher public domains could use anything other than English, that education could use any language other than English, or that training in English as the language of the elite should not receive the highest prestige.’ The ideology of the nation-state, though arguably dated in Europe, continues to inform national language-in-education policies in African Commonwealth countries, much as does the related ideology, that of socioeconomic development, to which I now turn.

The ideology of socio-economic development

The ideology of socio-economic development is the belief that development in all its forms (social, political, economic) is possible only through the medium of a former colonial language, in this case English. The ideology of development, based as it is on the rationalist model since it uses the nation-state as its quintessential goal, was transplanted into the territories that Britain colonised in Africa and elsewhere. It continues to inform language policy decision-making in postcolonial societies, and in Africa in particular, as is evident from language practices in education in African Commonwealth countries. Here, English dominates. In most of these countries, English is used as instructional medium from nursery school throughout the remainder of the educational system, including primary, secondary and tertiary education. In this regard, the Ugandan linguist Kwesiga (1994) remarks sarcastically that African mothers who have knowledge of this much-sought-after language start teaching their children English before they are born.

Drawing on the colonial ideals about language and development, African elites have perpetuated the colonial myth that development is possible only through the medium of an international language, in this case English; and

9

The sociolinguistc and language education landscapes of African Commonwealth countries

that African languages are good only for preserving African cultures and traditions. Thus, as Woolard and Schieffelin (1994, 63) observe, ‘the model of development is pervasive in post-colonial language planning, with paradoxical ideological implications that condemn languages, like societies, to perennial status as underdeveloped’. Contrary to the colonial ideals about language and development and the ideology of the nation-state with which they are associated, linguistic scholarship has shown conclusively that the notion that some languages inhibit intellectual or economic development is a myth. Tollefson (1991), for example, argues that although the languages of the colonised people are typically described as subordinate and traditional, and lacking higher literary forms, these assessments of value must be understood as reflections of relationships of power and domination rather than objective linguistic or historical facts.

On this view, Robinson and Varley (1998, 191) make the important point that language planners and policy-makers are typically motivated by efforts to secure or maintain their own interests. In other words, language policies and their outcomes are designed by vested interests and ultimately benefit those who are in power. Along these lines, Nekvapil and Nekula (2006, 311) point out that the interests of different participants and social groups in language planning situations are not identical and that the distribution of power among them is uneven. As Fishman (1994, 92) puts it, ‘language planning is . . . often disguised in the garb of ethno-national ideals and related to the righting of past wrongs, but these appeals are often mere ‘cover ups’ for the fact that those who advocate, conduct and implement language planning themselves have class, ethnic, political or religious interests which stand to benefit from the success of the language planning undertaken . . .’ Against this background, I raise the question: how can African Commonwealth countries break away from current hegemonic language practices in education, which marginalise African languages and favour English as the sole medium of instruction in the schools? In the following and final section, I argue that research into this question needs a paradigm shift, one that goes beyond critiquing the wrongs of colonialism and inherited colonial policies, for the criticism alone does not change the power relationship between African languages and English. Instead, I will propose Prestige Planning for African languages if these languages are to become, like English, an instrument of upward social mobility for their speakers and potential users.

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Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu

The case for Prestige Planning for African languages Traditionally, efforts to address language problems in Africa have concentrated on either status planning or corpus planning. Status planning has to do with regulating the power relationship between languages and their respective speakers in what Bourdieu (1991) has termed ‘the linguistic market place’; that is, the social context in which language is used. Corpus planning involves attempts to define or reform the standard language by changing or introducing forms of spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar (Fishman 1983). Haarmann (1990) argues that in addition to the status planning/corpus planning distinction, a separate category of language planning, which he calls prestige planning, must be distinguished. This is because, in Haarmann’s view, prestige planning does not depend on activities in the ranges of corpus or status planning. He says that prestige planning is concerned with raising the status of a language vis-à-vis other languages in society so that members of the targeted speech community have a positive attitude towards it. Haarmann (1990, 105) distinguishes between prestige as associated with the production of language planning and prestige as related to the reception of language planning. He goes on to say that prestige planning, whether corpus- or status-related, has to attract positive values to guarantee a favourable engagement on the part of the planners – producers of language planning – and, moreover, on the part of those who are supposed to use the planned language – the receivers of language planning (1990, 104).

Ager (2005) links prestige with image planning and argues that the prestige allocated by a community to a language forms part of the image the community has of itself – part of its attitudinal structure. Since both prestige and image are psychological attitudes, Ager says that attitudes need to be changed if planning is to be successful. He does not, however, explain how attitudes can be changed for planning to succeed.

In this chapter, I argue that the stakeholders’ negative attitudes towards African languages may change if these languages are associated with an economic value in the linguistic marketplace. On this view, Canagarajah and Ashraf (2013, 268) note pointedly that when local languages do not have importance for tertiary education or, it must be said, for education in general, ‘this reduces the motivation among students and families to learn languages other than English’. They comment further that ‘if parents and students see little or no functionality for less privileged languages, they will gradually veer toward the languages with more capital’ (Canagarajah and Ashraf 2013, 269).

Along these lines, Coupland (2013) argues, rightly, that the decisions that

11

The sociolinguistc and language education landscapes of African Commonwealth countries

people make to invest in certain languages or leave them behind is a function of the utility with which the languages are associated. In other words, ‘individuals invest in language skills for their children or themselves according to the benefits and costs associated with these investments’ (Vaillancourt 1996, 81). The ideas summarised in this paragraph are useful in two significant ways. One, they offer the lens through which we can understand why the populations of African Commonwealth countries favour English over African languages as the medium of instruction in the schools. Two, with this understanding, we can explore ways in which English and African languages can coexist productively in education for the benefit of all rather than just for the elite.

Towards framing Prestige Planning for African languages The majority of African Commonwealth countries became independent states in the early 1960s and have since engaged with the production of language planning, but hardly with the reception of language planning. The latter aims at positively influencing language behaviour and the attitudes of the speech community towards the target language. Traditionally, production of language planning in the African context has consisted only in elevating the status of selected Indigenous languages by recognising them as official languages of the state, but not allowing them to be used in the higher domains such as education, which remain the exclusive preserve of the former colonial language, English. South Africa, for instance, has given official recognition to nine African languages, as indicated in the table; while other African Commonwealth countries have given recognition to one African language only: Bemba in Zambia, Swati in Swaziland, Sotho in Lesotho, Swahili in Kenya and Tanzania. However, no scholar suggests that giving official status to one or more Indigenous languages to bring them to equality with English necessarily results in or has ever resulted in prestige status for the target languages. As Ager (2005, 1037) notes pointedly, ‘planning that does not influence behaviour, that does not convince hearts and minds of the target of planning, is pointless, no matter how well researched’.

To resolve the tension between language-in-education policy and practice, some scholars have suggested that language planners should adopt a plurilingual model indigenous to the region concerned (Canagarajah and Ashraf 2013, 258). More specifically, it is argued that rather than compartmentalising languages and demanding equal competencies in each of them, such a model

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Nkonko M. Kamwangamalu

would allow for functional competencies in complementary languages for different purposes and social domains, without neglecting mother-tongue maintenance. The issue, as I see it, is not so much whether languages should be compartmentalised, but rather what outcomes would result from the proposed compartmentalisation.

Against this background, I propose that for prestige planning for African languages to succeed, it must meet at least two conditions. First, a market must be created for these languages to raise awareness of their value on the labour market. In other words, individuals who are interested in learning or being schooled through the medium of an African language must know what that education will do for them in terms of upward social mobility. Will it, for instance, be as rewarding as an education through the medium of an ex-colonial language such as English? I argue that the response to these questions lies in the relationship between language and economic returns. This explains, following Grin (1999, 16), ‘why people learn certain languages and why, if they have the choice of using more than one, they prefer to use one or the other’. As economists would say, individuals respond to incentives and seek to acquire those language skills whose expected financial benefits exceed their expected costs (Bloom and Grenier 1996, 46–7). Once policymakers have created a market for the Indigenous languages, that is, once they have made the consumers aware of the benefits of vernacular-medium education and of the demand for skills in these languages on the labour market, the consumers are more likely to develop a positive attitude towards vernacular-medium education than they are at the moment.

Second, certified skills or knowledge, that is, school-acquired knowledge of African languages, must become one of the criteria for access to employment in the public and private sector, much as is the case for English skills in virtually all African Commonwealth countries. It is important to note that the British themselves and the Dutch and the Afrikaners imposed similar criteria in South Africa during their respective reign in that country, or what Kamwangamalu (2003) refers to as the era of Dutchification (1652–1795), Anglicization (1795–1803, 1806–1948), and Afrikanerization (1948–94). These were times when the Dutch, the British and the Afrikaners required knowledge of their respective languages, Dutch, English and Afrikaans for access to employment and whatever resources were available in the country. Thus, the value of English or of any language for that matter depends mostly not so much on ‘who is using it and in what context’ (Ricento 2013, 134), but rather on the ends for which it is used.

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The sociolinguistc and language education landscapes of African Commonwealth countries

It follows that because of the ends to which it is used, English has a higher market value and more privileged status than local languages in the national curricula in virtually all African Commonwealth countries (Kamwangamalu 2000, 59), and proficiency in it serves as a marker of socio-economic class (Ricento 2013). It is not surprising that in their study of language-in-education practices in South Africa, for instance, Rudwick and Parmegiani (2013) found that English has more value than the other official languages as the medium of instruction. In particular, Rudwick and Parmegiani report that when asked about her preference for English over Zulu as the medium of instruction, one participant in the study said that ‘Zulu is as important as all other languages, but then, with English being the language that you need to succeed as a person, it’s better to learn in English’. Another participant described the preference for English as ‘going with the flow’: ‘The circumstances under which our country (South Africa) is right now force us to go with the flow. The flow is English. You can’t stop the flow. Even Zulu teachers send their children to Model C schools.’ Yet another participant raised the question: ‘Where would I be employed with my Zulu degree in the world?

Maybe in government, but I don’t know of a single department where I can only speak isiZulu’ (Rudwick and Parmegiani 2013, 102).

Conclusion I will conclude this chapter by sharing the experience I had recently at Moi University in Eldoret, Kenya, where I delivered a paper proposing prestige planning for the Indigenous lingua franca, Kiswahili. One member of the audience reacted to the proposal as follows: Professor, what you are proposing will not work. Let us move on. English has brought us development; it has brought us jobs; it has brought us education; it has brought us literacy; but what have African languages done for us? Nothing! Let us just move on! (Kamwangamalu 2013b)

This reaction sums up the elite’s attitude towards African languages vis-à-vis English and current language practices in the educational systems of African Commonwealth countries. ‘Moving on’ simply means using English as the sole medium of instruction in the schools. And yet, despite the early introduction of English into the education system and the resources invested in its promotion, there have been numerous claims of ‘falling standards’ of English in the educational institutions of most African Commonwealth countries,

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including Kenya (Mazrui 1997). Samuels (1995, 31), for instance, reports that only a small percentage – between 5% and 20% – of the population in the Commonwealth region can communicate in English.

Regarding Kenya, Mazrui (2013) quotes Professor Japheth Kiptoo, then vice-chancellor of one of Kenya’s universities, Egerton University, as saying that ‘many undergraduate students in that country’s public universities are functionally illiterate in English and could not even write a simple application for a job in the language’ (Mazrui 2013, 149). In a related study, Balfour (1999) reported that 80% of Black South Africans and about 40% of Whites are illiterate and innumerate at Standard Five level (i.e. grade 7). In Uganda and Nigeria, Muthwii and Kioko (2003) note that only about 15% of the population have functional literacy in the official language, English.

It is worth asking, then, whether it is pedagogically justified to continue investing in an education through the medium of English only (Djite 2008), or what Coulmas (1992, 149) rightly describes as a ‘monolingual, elitist system’, even if that education, practiced for over 200 years, has failed to spread literacy among the populations in African Commonwealth countries.

To change this state of affairs, I have proposed prestige planning for African languages if these languages are to become, like English, an instrument of upward social mobility. The proposal is made in light of theoretical developments in language economics (Grin 1996; Grin, Vaillancourt, Sfreddo 2010).

It entails associating African languages with an economic value on the labour market and requiring academic skills in these languages as one of the criteria for access to employment. Since all past prestige planning activities in African Commonwealth countries have concentrated only on the production of language planning, the prestige planning model being proposed in this chapter requires that the focus be on the reception of language planning. Put differently, the model of prestige planning is intended to change the hearts and behaviours of the target language community with the aim to promote linguistic diversity involving English and African languages in education. Also, the model of prestige planning for African languages aims to challenge the ideology of the nation-state and of socio-economic development that African Commonwealth countries have inherited from the former colonial power, Britain. As already noted, both ideologies not only presume that socio-economic development is possible purely through the medium of a western language, in this case English, but also cast African languages as a primitive obstacle to development.

It is ironic that English was also once described as a primitive language.

Loonen (1996) writes that some 400 years ago, English was experienced by

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many as useless, inferior, even ugly and very insular: ‘English will do you good in England, but past Dover it is worth nothing’, wrote John Florio in First Frutes (1578) (Loonen 1996, 3). Loonen goes on to say that ‘English was ranked among the basest of languages, characterised as a confused and depraved mixture, indeed the dregs and dross of all European languages; considered by many to be imbecile and inferior, a language no man can make sense of and fit to poison cats and dogs’ (Loonen 1996, 3–4). Today, English has left all of these negative attributes behind and has become a global commodity. African languages may not achieve the glory that English has experienced, but if prestige planning for these languages can make them valuable at least on the local labour market, then the elite in African Commonwealth countries will have made a big leap in the right direction. It remains to be seen, however, whether the elite will move on with English alone, or whether they will take African languages along. If they do choose to move on with English alone, then the language will continue to serve, as Graddol (2006, 38) describes it and warns in his book English Next, as ‘one of the mechanisms for structuring inequality in developing economies’, including African Commonwealth countries.

Notes 1 An earlier version of this chapter was presented as a keynote address to the conference ‘English in Business and Commerce: Interactions and Policies’. Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, 21–2 March 2014.

2 The information for the table was culled from the following sources: Population: The Commonwealth Homepage – www.thecommonwealth.org/member-countries Official Languages: The Commonwealth Homepage – www.thecommonwealth.org/member-countries Ethnologue: The Languages of the World – www.ethnologue.com/browse/countries 3 In the Commonwealth homepage, English is listed as the only official language in Malawi; but The Statesman’s Year Book 2014, edited by Barry Turner, shows that the country has two official languages, English and Chichewa, as indicated in the table.

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References Ager, D. (2005). Prestige and Image Planning. In: Eli Hinkel, ed., Handbook of Research in Second Language Teaching and Learning, 1035–54. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

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Bamgbose, A. (2000). Language and Exclusion: The Consequences of Language Policies in Africa. Hamburg: LIT Verlag Munster.

Blommaert, J. (1996). Language Planning as a Discourse on Language and Society: The Linguistic Ideology of a Scholarly Tradition. Language Problems and Language Planning 20 (3), 199–222.

Bloom, D.E. and Grenier, G. (1996). Language, Employment, and Earnings in the United States: Spanish-English Differentials from 1970 to 1990. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 121, 43–68.

Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and Symbolic Power, trans. G. Raymond and M. Adamson.

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Canagarajah, S. and Ashraf, H. (2013). Multilingualism and Education in South Asia: Resolving Policy/practice Dilemma. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 33, 258–85.

Coulmas, F. (1992). Language and the Economy. Oxford: Blackwell.

Coupland, N. (2013). Introduction: Sociolinguistics in the Global Era. In N. Coupland, ed., The Handbook of Language and Globalization, 1–27. Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.

Davies, A. (1996). Review Article: Ironizing the Myth of Linguicism. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 17 (6), 485–96.

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Fardon, R., and Furniss, G., eds (1994). African Languages, Development and the State. New York/London: Routledge.

Fishman, J. A. (1983). Language Modernization and Planning in Comparison with Other Types of National Modernization and Planning. In C. Kennedy, ed., Language Planning and Language Education, 37–54. London: George Allen and Unwin.

Fishman, J. A. (1994). Critiques of Language Planning: A Minority Languages Perspective.

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Fishman, J. A. (1996). Introduction: Some Empirical and Theoretical Issues. In J. Fishman, A. Conrad, and A. Rubal-Lopez, eds, Post Imperial English: Status Change in Former British and American Colonies, 1940–90, 3–12. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Graddol, D. (2006). English Next. Why Global English May Mean the End of English as a Foreign Language. London: The British Council.

Grin, F. (1996). The Economics of Language: Survey, Assessment, and Prospects. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 121, 17–44.

Grin, F. (1999). Economics. In J. A. Fishman, ed., Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, 9–24. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Grin, F. and Vaillancourt, F. (1997). The Economics of Multilingualism: Overview and Analytical Framework. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 17, 43–65.

Grin, F., Sfreddo, C. and Vaillancourt, F. (2010). The Economics of the Multilingual Workplace.

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Haarmann, H. (1990). Language Planning in the Light of a General Theory of Language: A Methodological Framework. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 86, 103–26.

Hoffmann, C. (2000). The Spread of English and the Growth of Multilingualism with English in Europe. In J. Cenoz, and J. Ulrike (2000). English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language, 1–21. Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters.

Kamwangamalu, N. M. (2000). A New Language Policy, Old Language Practices: Status Planning for African Languages in a Multilingual South Africa. South African Journal of African Languages 20 (1), 50–60.

Kamwangamalu, N. M. (2003). Social Change and Language Shift: South Africa. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 23, 225–42.

Kamwangamalu, N. M. (2013a). English in Language Policies and Ideologies in Africa – Challenges and Prospects for Vernacularization. In Bayley, Robert, Cameron, Richard and Lucas, Cecil, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Sociolinguistics, 545–62). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kamwangamalu, N. M. (2013b). Language Policy and Economics in Africa. Paper delivered at Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya. Department of Linguistics, August 1, 2013.

Kwesiga, J. B. (1994). Literacy and the Language Question: Brief Experiences from Uganda.

Language and Education: An International Journal 8 (1 and 2), 57–63.

Loonen, P. (1996). English in Europe: From Timid to Tyrannical? English Today 46 (12) 2, 3–9.

Mazrui, A. (1997). The World Bank, the Language Question and the Future of African Education. Race and Class. A Journal for Black and Third World Liberation 38 (3), 35–49.

Mazrui, A. (2013). Language and Education in Kenya: Between the Colonial Legacy and the New Constitutional Order. In J. W. Tollefson, ed., Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues (second edition), 139–55. New York/London: Routledge.

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Seidlhofer, B., Breiteneder, A. and Pitzl, M-L. (2006). English as a Lingua Franca in Europe: Challenges for Applied Linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 25, 3–34.

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Tollefson, J. (2013). Language Policy in a Time of Crisis and Transformation. In J.W. Tollefson, ed., Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues (second edition), 11–34. New York/London: Routledge.

Vaillancourt, F. (1996). Language and Socioeconomic Status in Quebec: Measurement, Findings, Determinants, and Policy Costs. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 121, 69–92.

Vaillancourt, F. and Grin, F. (2000). The Choice of a Language of Instruction: The Economic Aspects. Distance Learning Course on Language Instruction in Basic Education.

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Woolard, K. A. and Schieffelin, B. B. (1994). Language Ideology. Annual Review of Anthropology 23, 55–82.

2

MULTILINGUALISM AND LANGUAGE IN EDUCATION IN TANZANIA

Birgit Brock-Utne (University of Oslo, Norway) and Martha A. S. Qorro (University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)

Introduction We are committed to equality and respect for the protection and promotion of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development, for all without discrimination on any grounds as the foundations of peaceful, just and stable societies. (The Commonwealth Charter 2012)

These words from the Commonwealth Charter point at a Commonwealth bent on promoting cultural rights. Among those rights is the right to language and the right to use a familiar language as the language of instruction.

When the Charter goes against discrimination on any grounds, it must also include discrimination because of the language a person speaks and feels at home with.

Tanzania is a multilingual country with a unique situation in Africa whereby, in addition to numerous ethnic community languages (ECLs), there is Kiswahili, a lingua franca spoken by an estimated 95% or more of the population. Kiswahili is one of the two official languages in Tanzania, English is the other official language, spoken by less than 5% in the country.

The growth of Kiswahili Few people are aware of the fact that the Germans used Kiswahili as the language of government administration, promoted its use as the medium of instruction in schools, and transliterated Kiswahili from the Arabic script 19

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to the Roman alphabet (Kurtz 1972, here taken from Puja 2003). They did so mainly because they did not think that Tanganyikans could learn to speak German well enough to use it as a language of instruction (see Brock-Utne 2000, 176). Although Kiswahili was also used as a language of administration during British rule, the British promoted the use of English as a medium of instruction in schools and as an official language in Tanganyika. The following quote is an example of an unsuccessful effort to eliminate Kiswahili as a lingua franca in Tanganyika: The existence of Swahili in Tanganyika and its place in school teaching is unfortunate for it seems to have affected adversely the teaching of both vernacular and English . . . We suggest, therefore, that because the present teaching of Swahili stands in the way of the strong development of both the vernacular and English teaching, a policy should be followed which leads to its eventual elimination from all schools where it is taught as lingua franca. (A recommendation by the Binns Mission report published in 1953, and quoted by Cameron and Dodd 1970, 110.)

At this time Kiswahili was already widely spoken in Tanzania and was the language of instruction in the first years of primary school. The first President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere, took a completely different stand to that of the Binns Mission on the language issue. During the struggle for independence, the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) under Nyerere’s leadership used Kiswahili to mobilise Tanganyikans against colonial rule.

Kiswahili enters the 1962 constitution of Tanganyika The 1962 constitution of Tanganyika put Kiswahili more firmly on the map.

It declared: ‘The languages of Tanganyika are English and Kiswahili’. And on 8 December 1962, President Julius Nyerere for the first time addressed Parliament in Kiswahili. Referencing this event, Saida Yahya-Othman and Herman Batibo (1996, 376) note that it is from this date that one can say that Kiswahili had become the national language of Tanganyika. After independence, the promotion of adult education through the medium of Kiswahili helped to spread its use to the older people in the rural areas of mainland Tanzania. In 1967 the then Prime Minister Rashid Kawawa directed all government business to be conducted in Kiswahili (Senkoro 2005). Nyerere saw how the use of Kiswahili would rapidly increase the literacy rate in the country and mobilise the people for an African social democratic policy, which he would term ‘ujamaa’ (familyhood). Nyerere did a lot to promote Kiswahili,

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personally translating two of Shakespeare’s plays into Kiswahili and using the language in parliament, in the government and in the lower judicial courts.

In his eagerness to promote Kiswahili, Nyerere was aware of the fact that the other vernacular languages in Tanzania were driven to the back-seat. He felt, however, that the other languages should be kept alive and that words from these languages should enrich Kiswahili. There are several examples of how he introduced words and expressions from his mother tongue, Kizanaki, into Kiswahili.

An alternative to the strong promotion of Kiswahili, had it been politically and economically feasible at the time, would have been to settle for a policy where mother tongues of the children were used for beginning literacy together with Kiswahili, which then would have been used as the sole language of instruction at a later stage, while English was taught as a subject throughout the education system. This is a trilingual model of education advocated among others by the late Cameroonian sociolinguist Maurice Tadadjeu (1989). In Voie Africaine he argues for a three-language model for Africa, whereby everybody first learns to master his/her mother tongue, then learns a regional African language that can be used as a language of instruction in secondary and tertiary education and at the same time learns an international language as a subject. When Nyerere did not promote the multilingual view argued for by Tadajeu, it probably had to do with his wish to unite the country and avoid tribalism. Currently, Kiswahili in Tanzania is increasingly becoming the mother tongue of the younger generation born in urban and peri-urban areas, where people from different ethnic communities live and work together.

The ethnic community languages of Tanzania According to Muzale and Rugemalira (2008), there are 150 ethnic community languages in Tanzania. The education language policy is silent about these languages. These are the languages that are mostly spoken in the remote rural areas. For children aged 0–6 years, the respective ECL of their community is the only language they speak. They start primary school at age 7, at which point they encounter Kiswahili for the first time and start using it as their language of instruction (LOI). Many of the ethnic community languages are very similar; many are just dialects of each other because most of them are of Bantu origin. However, some of the languages are not Bantu and are very different. This is the case for the languages of the Wamaasai,

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Wabarbaig, Wairaqw and Wahadzabe. For example, one of the authors witnessed two election campaigns (General Elections for 1995 and for 2000) among the Barbaig and Hadzabe ethnic communities where someone had to translate the campaign speeches from Kiswahili into Kibarbaig or Kihadzabe.

This is an indication that in the remote rural areas Kiswahili is rarely spoken, if at all, and children from these communities would most likely not speak Kiswahili until they started going to school at the age of 7.

Apart from Kiswahili, most Tanzanians speak one or more of the ECLs that they spoke with their parents when young and often spoke in the village where they grew up – especially those on the borderlines of two or more languages. They are multilingual in African languages, as are most Africans (Prah and Brock-Utne 2009). A Tanzanian school inspector tells how he grew up with three different languages (Kimizi 2009). He would speak one of them with his father’s clan, another very different one with his mother’s clan (they all lived in the same compound), and Kiswahili with his friends. He could not say which one was his mother tongue of first language (L1). Adama Ouane (2009), from Mali, the former Director of the UNESCO Institute of Lifelong Learning, also explains that he grew up with three different African languages simultaneously and, like Kimizi, cannot tell which one is his mother tongue or L1. Africans are now increasingly moving within and between countries and as a result are becoming more and more multilingual in African languages. Prah (2009) found that in Nima, Ghana, 69% of those interviewed spoke at least four languages, while 41% spoke five languages or more. It is generally estimated that Kiswahili is spoken by more than 100 million people in East Africa, yet there is no secondary school or institution of higher education in Tanzania that uses Kiswahili as the LOI. The majority of newspapers in Tanzania are written in Kiswahili and the number of internet sites in Kiswahili is growing daily.

The language policy of Tanzania The language policy of Tanzania has been going back and forth between the wishes of extending Kiswahili as the language of instruction in secondary school and higher education, and introducing English as the LOI already in primary school (Brock-Utne 2012). In 1967 the second vice president declared Kiswahili the medium of instruction throughout the seven years of primary education (Std. I – VII)1 . In the second Five Year Plan of Tanzania (1969–74) this move was thought to be only part of a larger plan to implement the use of

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Kiswahili as the medium of instruction throughout the educational system.

As noted in the Five Year Plan: Children, on entering secondary school, will now have to shift to study in a new language, at the same time as taking on more difficult sets of subjects . . . as the government moves over to the complete use of Kiswahili it will hence become more and more inappropriate to have the secondary and higher educational system operate in English (URT 1969, 152).

The government at the time was also aware of the fact than when it came to the language of instruction, its choice and use would have social class implications. The Five Year Plan has this to say about the ‘linguistic gulf’: The division between Kiswahili education at primary level and English education at the secondary level will create and perpetuate a linguistic gulf between different groups and will also tend to lend an alien atmosphere to making it inevitably remote from the problems of the masses of society (URT 1969, 152).

In 1969 the Ministry of National Education sent a circular to the headmasters and headmistresses of all secondary schools outlining the plan for the gradual introduction of Kiswahili as the medium of instruction. According to Bhaiji (1976), secondary school teachers at that time also favoured a shift to Kiswahili as a medium of instruction. The Ministry’s circular suggested that political education (‘Siasa’), a subject dealing with the political philosophy of the party CCM, should be taught in Kiswahili from the school year 1969/70, Domestic Science from the school year 1970/71, and History, Geography, Biology, Agriculture and Mathematics from 1971/72 (Bhaiji 1976, 112). Bhaiji (1976) explains that at this time curriculum developers had already started to translate and compile all the technical and scientific terms of school subjects. Some schools had already received a booklet on mathematical terms in Kiswahili. The teaching of Siasa through the medium of Kiswahili was introduced. But then the reform stopped. Why did it stop when both the secondary school teachers and the Ministry of Education were in favour of a shift and curriculum developers had started to translate and compile texts?

As far as we are aware, nothing has been written about this. According to Tanzanians knowledgeable about the language policy discourse in Tanzania, it seems that the reform was stopped by the president himself.

Swalehe Kassera (2003) from Iringa, tells of a wonderful Mathematics teacher, Kiimbila, now deceased, who in the early 1960s, working in Kagera,2 used Kiswahili in secondary school for teaching the basics of Mathematics.

In this way the students understood Mathematics much better than when

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taught in English. Kiimbila was of the opinion that Kiswahili ought to be used in Mathematics teaching also at the university. Kassera argued, like Kiimbila did, that Kiswahili is understood all over the country and functions as a second language for those for whom it is not the first.

The language policy on the medium of instruction in Tanzania stipulates that Kiswahili is the LOI for primary schools while English is the LOI for secondary schools. The most current language policy (not yet made public) advocates the introduction of English as the LOI also in government primary schools (it has been used in some private primary schools for some years), and Kiswahili as the LOI in secondary schools. So far, a few government primary schools have switched to using English. No secondary school has, however, switched to the use of Kiswahili as LOI. Our own research in the Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA) project, running from 2002 until 2012, shows that secondary school pupils in Tanzania learn better when the LOI in secondary schools is Kiswahili than when it is English.3 In 2000, the National Council for Kiswahili, BAKITA, organised a twoday conference on the language of instruction and quality of education in Tanzania. On the second day of the conference, the Minister of Education, a professor of Science, was invited to give some closing remarks. Qorro (2009) tells us that his final comment on the issue of language of instruction was that the government did not have the money to do experiments and ‘waste’ the few resources it had on the LOI. ‘The little money that is available will be spent on improving the quality of education and not on the language of instruction’, he concluded, then declared that the conference was closed. From the minister’s remarks, one gathers that the LOI is seen as separate from the process of delivering quality education. The minister even considered spending funds on the LOI as a waste of resources. Some of those who participated in the heated discussion were left with questions unanswered. Qorro (2009, 60) asks: . . . did the Minister understand the meaning of language of instruction? How does the language of instruction relate to education, and quality education for that matter? Is it possible to improve the quality of education without addressing the issue of language of instruction? If, for example, the conference had been on electrification of a number of schools, would the Minister have said that there was no money to ‘waste’ on copper wires and that the little money available would be spent on supplying electricity to the schools? How else is the electrification process to take place if not through copper wires? Or, suppose the issue under discussion had been supplying water to the schools, would the Minister have said

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that there was no money for pipes and that the little money available would be spent on supplying water to the schools, but no money to ‘waste’ on pipes?

The language policy of Tanzania makes no mention of the over 150 ethnic community languages, mostly spoken in the rural areas of mainland Tanzania. This position is probably based on the belief that Kiswahili is spoken by all Tanzanians, young and old. However, for children between ages 6 and 9 years, living in remote rural areas, Kiswahili is not the home language, and many children from these areas do not encounter Kiswahili until they start attending school. This situation has either been overlooked by the policy makers or simply ignored.

The importance of using ECLs in early education has been raised elsewhere. In West Africa, Fakinlede (2013) proposes laying a sound basis for scientific and reflective thinking early in a child’s learning process by making use of his Indigenous language. He argues that introducing Science and Technology to a child is most successful when done in the language the child best understands. This enables the child to form ideas that stay with him/her throughout life. The other advantages of using ECLs, as stated by Fakinlede, are that the situation enables the child to indigenise knowledge in Science and Technology early in the child’s education process; and it makes Science available to all children, irrespective of their economic background or status.

Recent research findings (Twaweza 2012, Mapunda 2013) from rural areas in Tanzania show that the situation is hopeless in the sense that pupils do not understand what the teacher is saying. It is recommended that policy makers bring on board the issue of LOI in the early years of primary school in rural areas and consider the use of ECLs as LOI, at least for the first three or four years of schooling, then transit into Kiswahili as LOI for the rest of schooling duration, including secondary and tertiary education. English should be learnt as a subject, a foreign language, which it is to Tanzanians. The best way to learn English is not to have it as a language of instruction but to learn it as a subject, taught well by teachers who are good speakers of English. Teaching a foreign language is a skill that one cannot expect teachers of other subjects to have developed.

A study by Twaweza (2012) shows that, although the expectations of most parents, teachers and policy makers is that every child in Tanzania in Standard 3 or above should have mastered core literacy and numeracy skills of Standard 2 level, the reality falls far short of this goal. Over the past three years literacy levels have remained low and largely unchanged. Some of the most important results from the Twaweza study (2012) show that very few children in rural areas are learning to read in early primary school, and that

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nationally, only one in four children in Standard 3 can read a Standard 2 level story in Kiswahili. The study further shows that it is not until Standard 5 that the majority of pupils can read at Standard 2 level.

Data from the study by Twaweza confirm clearly the urban-rural disparities in children’s learning outcomes. In general, children who live in urban districts performed much better than children who live in rural districts. The urban-rural disparities have also been observed in another study conducted in Tanzania by Mapunda (2013).

Mapunda (2013) conducted a study on early literacy learning through Kiswahili in Tanzania primary schools. He compared pupils’ classroom participation in two types of settings. One setting was a rural district where an ECL is the dominant language of the community; while in the other setting, Kiswahili is the dominant language of the community. Mapunda studied classroom interaction conducted in Kiswahili in two linguistic contexts. The reason the two linguistic contexts were chosen can be interpreted as testing the myth (as reflected in the policy pronouncement) that Kiswahili is used and understood well everywhere in the country and therefore is suitable as the only language of instruction in all primary schools. However, findings showed that pupils in remote rural districts, where the ECL is dominant, had more difficulties learning through Kiswahili as LOI compared to pupils from the district in which Kiswahili was the dominant language. From his study, Mapunda (2013) points out indicators of language difficulties as gathered from his classroom observation; these he points out as: • Instances where pupils responded in ECL • Poor participation or withdrawal of responses from teacher’s questions • Only a few pupils answering questions and teachers consistently nominating the same pupils to get responses • Use of teaching strategies that conceal silence, an indication of communication failure • Use of ECL in group discussion • Anomolous relationship in the classroom between teachers and learners • Responses that are irrelevant to questions asked. (Mapunda 2013, 77) In some cases teachers admitted that pupils did not understand Kiswahili at all, especially in the early grades. Specifically, pupils had difficulty describing pictures in Kiswahili, using Kiswahili vocabulary, and had problems related to syntax and morphology.

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The findings from the Twaweza study (2012) are corroborated by data from Mapunda’s study (2013), although it should be noted that the Twaweza study is of a more general nature, while Mapunda’s study is based on pupils’ ability to use Kiswahili as LOI. In any kind of learning, a language that the learner understands is a prerequisite for effective learning. This is because the level of language mastery determines the processing and presentation of thoughts. In order for a child to become fully literate, he/she needs both knowledge of language (how to use it) and knowledge about language (how it is structured/how it works).

In the case of Tanzania, especially in the remote rural areas, the most appropriate language that can best function as LOI for early child education/ literacy is the respective ECLs. The major snag in this case is the multiplicity of these languages and the practicability of training teachers and getting learning materials in the ethnic languages.

Rubagumya et al. (2011, 83) end their article on linguistic human rights in Tanzania by stating: What is needed above all in Tanzania, as in Africa in general, is higher quality education through African languages. Communities in Africa will only be able to learn and teach through their own languages once they see that their use in schools is effective and their role in society brings rewards. The duration of education through these languages must be extended, its effectiveness increased and the number of languages used as media of instruction expanded.

Rubagumya et al. (2011) claim that this message is being heard by academics, but not yet clearly enough by governments or communities (see e.g. BrockUtne 2014a). We would like to add that the message is being heard by some academics, but far from all. The question of which language should be used as the LOI in secondary school is a question hotly debated by academics at the University of Dar es Salaam – a good example is the email debate on this issue that followed the intranet publication of an application for a job as an ‘askari’ (a guard), written in pitiful English by a secondary school leaver (Senkoro 2008). Yet, we believe, as Rubagumya et al. (2011) do, that the fight for the linguistic rights of Tanzanians must come from the academics (BrockUtne 2014b). We agree with their argument that academics must make the message louder through advocacy and by further research.

We should also put more resources into showing that it works by setting up demonstration schools that deliver high-quality education with average levels of resourcing in African languages. Plans for creating such demonstration

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schools have been there for some time, but have not been realised yet. Finally, African languages should be used for increasingly wide and more sophisticated functions in society, so that they become accepted by their users as proper vehicles for education (Rubagumya et.al. 2011, 83), and that knowledge and skills gained through formal education can be disseminated to the wider public.

notes 1 At that time, middle schools had already been abolished and there was no Std. VIII under the new system of education.

2 Kagera is an area in Tanzania where most people speak Kihaya as their first language; Kiswahili is a second language to the people living in the area (the Wahaya), though many are brought up with Kiswahili and Kihaya simultaneously.

3 In the first phase of the LOITASA project four books were published. Two were published in Tanzania and two were published in South Africa (Brock-Utne et al. 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006). A Canadian who had read all four books had them reviewed and, together with two blind reviewers, selected chapters from all the first four books to make a fifth book published in Europe (Brock-Utne et al. 2010). In the second phase, four more books were produced with, once again, two being published in Tanzania (Qorro et al. 2008, 2012), and two being published in South Africa (Desai et al. 2010, 2013).

References Bhaiji, A. F. (1976). The Medium of Instruction in Our Secondary Schools. In the Journal of Department of Education, Papers in Education and Development. Dar es Salaam: Dar es Salaam University Press, 111–25.

Brock-Utne, B. (2000). Whose Education for All? The Recolonization of the African Mind?

New York/London: Falmer. Reprinted in 2006, Seoul: Homi Publishing.

Brock-Utne, B. (2012). Where have all the Policy Drafts Gone? Keynote speech at the International Conference on 50 Years of Kiswahili as a Language of African Liberation, Unification and Renaissance held on Friday 5 October 2012, hosted by the Institute of Kiswahili Studies University of Dar es Salaam and ACALAN, Bamako.

Brock-Utne, B. (2014a). Language of Instruction in Africa – The Most Important and Least Appreciated Issue. International Journal of Educational Development in Africa (IJEDA) 1 (1), 4–18.

Brock-Utne, B. (2014b). Part of the Solution. In Babaci-Wilhite, Z., ed., Giving Space to African Voices: Rights to Local Languages and Local Curriculum. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Brock-Utne, B., Desai, Z. and Qorro, M., eds, (2003). Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa (LOITASA). Dar es Salaam: E and D Limited.

Brock-Utne, B., Desai, Z. and Qorro, M., eds, (2004). Researching the Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa. Cape Town: African Minds.

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Brock-Utne, B., Desai, Z. and Qorro, M., eds, (2005). LOITASA Research in Progress. Dar es Salaam: KAD Associates.

Brock-Utne, B., Desai, Z. and Qorro, M., eds, (2006). Focus on Fresh Data on the Language of Instruction Debate in Tanzania and South Africa. Cape Town: African Minds.

Brock-Utne, B., Desai, Z. and Qorro, M. with Pitman, A., eds (2010). Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa. Highlights from a Project. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Cameron, J. and Dodd, W. (1970). Society, Schools and Progress in Tanzania. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Desai, Z., Qorro, M. and Brock-Utne, B., eds (2010). Educational Challenges in Multilingual Societies. LOITASA Phase 2 Research. Cape Town: African Minds.

Desai, Z., Qorro, M. and Brock-Utne, B., eds (2013). The Role of Language in Teaching and Learning Science and Mathematics. Cape Town: African Minds.

Fakinlede, K. J. (2013). Blending Indigenous Languages into Science Education – A New Approach to Teaching Science and Mathematics in Schools.

Kassera, S. (2003). Kiimbila kathibitisha hata ‘Wamrima’ wanakimudu Kiswahili (trans.

Kiimbila Confirms That Even the ‘Wamrima’ Can Use Kiswahili). Rai Newspaper 7 October.

Kimizi, Moshi (2009). From a Eurocentric to an Afrocentric Perspective on Language of Instruction in the African Context: A View From Within. In K. K. Prah and B. BrockUtne., eds, Multilingualism: A Paradigm Shift in AfricanLlanguage of Instruction Polices.

Cape Town: CASAS. Mapunda, G. (2013). A Look into Early Literacy Learning through Swahili in Rural Tanzania, Published PhD Thesis, Deutschland, Germany: Lambert Academic Publishing.

Muzale, H. R. T. and J. Rugemalira. (2008). Researching and Documenting the Languages of Tanzania. In Languages Documentation and Conservation 1 (2), 68–108.

Ouane, A. (2009). My Journey To and Through a Multilingual Landscape. In K. K. Prah and B. Brock-Utne, eds, Multilingualism: A Paradigm Shift in African Language of Instruction Polices. Cape Town: CASAS. Prah, K. K. (2009a). A Tale of Two Cities: Trends in Multilingualism in Two African Cities – The Cases of Nima-Accra and Katatura-Windhoek. In K. K. Prah and B. Brock-Utne, eds, Multilingualism: A Paradigm Shift in African Language of Instruction Polices. Cape Town: CASAS. Prah, K. K. and Brock-Utne, B. eds. (2009). Multilingualism – An African Advantage: A Paradigm Shift in African Language of Instruction Polices. CASAS Cape Town.

Puja, G. K., (2003). Kiswahili and Higher Education in Tanzania: Reflections Based On a Sociological Study From the University of Dar es Salaam In B. Brock-Utne, Z. Desai and M. Qorro, eds, Language of Instruction in Tanzania and South Africa. (LOITASA). Dar es Salaam: E and D Publishers.

Qorro M. (2009). Parents’ and Policy-Makers’ Insistence on Foreign Languages as Media of Education in Africa: Restricting Access to Quality Education. In B. Brock-Utne and I. Skattum, eds, Languages and Education in Africa: A Comparative and Transdisciplinary Discussion. Oxford: Symposium Books.

Qorro, M., Desai, Z and Brock-Utne, B, eds (2008). LOITASA: Reflecting on Phase I and Entering Phase II. Dar es Salaam: E and D Vision Publishing Limited.

Qorro, M., Desai, Z and Brock-Utne, B, eds (2012). Language of Instruction: A Key to Undestanding What the Teacher is Saying. Dar es Salam: Kad Associates.

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Rubagumya, C. M., Afitska, O, Clegg , J and Kiliku, P, eds (2011). A Three-tier Citizenship: Can the State in Tanzania Guarantee Linguistic Human Rights? International Journal of Educational Development 31 (2011), 78–85.

Senkoro, F. E. M. K. (2005). Teaching in Kiswahili at University Level: The Case of Kiswahili Department at the University of Dar es Salaam. In B. Brock-Utne, Z. Desai and M. Qorro, eds, LOITASA Research in Progress. Dar es Salaam: KAD Associates.

— (2008). ‘English is Not Our Mother Land’. Anecdotal Discussions and Views on the Language Question in Tanzania. In M. Qorro, Z. Desai and B. Brock-Utne, eds, LOITASA: Reflecting on Phase I and Entering Phase II. Dar es Salaam: E and D Vision Publishing Limited.

Tadadjeu, M. (1989). Voie Africaine: Esquisse du Communautarisme Africain. Cameroon: Club OUA. The Commonwealth Charter (2013). London: The Stationery Office Limited.

Twaweza (2012). Are Our Children Learning? Annual Learning Assessment Report Tanzania 2012. Dar es Salaam: Twaweza.

URT (United Republic of Tanzania) (1969). Second Five-year Plan for Economic and Social Development. 1 July 1969 – 30 June 1974. Dar es Salaam: Government Printers.

3

Language-in-education policy and practice in Ghanaian classrooms: Lessons from School for Life’s complementary education programme

Kingsley Arkorful (Education Development Center) and Carolyn Temple Adger

(Center for Applied Linguistics)

Introduction Despite all the research and the many policy debates arguing that children learn best when they can participate fully, and that developing strong language and literacy skills implies learning first in a language that children know (e.g. Arua 2003; Ouane and Blanz 2011), Ghana still struggles with the language-in-education issue. From colonial times through the immediate post-independence period to the present, selection of the language of instruction in the primary school – either English, which is the official language, or one of 11 Ghanaian languages – has been inconsistent both in terms of policy and practice (Opoku-Amankwa 2009; Prah 2009). Ghana’s languagein-education policy currently calls for Ghanaian language instruction at the lower primary school level, but there remains a fundamental disconnect between this policy and educational practice in the formal schools, where English maintains a foothold. This state of affairs raises questions about how children who speak languages other than English can gain access to quality primary education. At issue is how to accommodate the need to build new knowledge and skills out of what children already know – especially their language resources, since language is fundamental to learning – along with the demand for children to learn English, which opens doors to economic and educational choices and opportunities.

School for Life, a well-established complementary education programme serving out-of-school children in Ghana’s Northern Region, provides lessons for the comprehensive implementation of the country’s language-in-education policy in lower primary school. This chapter describes the School for Life 31

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curriculum and pedagogy and compares it to that of the Ghanaian government lower primary school, drawing on a study of the planned, implemented and received curricula of the two systems that analyses them within a social constructivist framework (Arkorful 2013). While the two curricula share some similar characteristics, such as culturally relevant themes or topics, the School for Life curriculum is also functionally relevant as it is designed to connect with the social and economic lives of the learners and their communities. More important, consistent use of the mother tongue throughout the School for Life lessons creates the basis for a real community of learning in which teachers, learners and parents share in the social construction of knowledge.

Language-in-education policy in Ghana Of the more than 70 languages indigenous to Ghana (Lewis 2009), only 11 are officially approved for use in the formal school system. There is very little information on the reasons for their selection, but maintaining this tradition is at least partly political: The languages are geographically distributed and they include several smaller Northern languages. However, selecting eleven out of the multiplicity of Ghana’s languages implies depriving almost 30% of the school population from using their mother tongue in school (Ghana Statistical Service 2012). Moreover, with a shifting language-in-education policy over the years and apathetic implementation, many more children have been similarly deprived.

During the colonial era (pre-1957), the language of instruction policy called for using both English and local languages in primary schools. Since independence, Ghana has continued this policy, albeit inconsistently. From 1971 up until 2002, the language-in-education policy in Ghana was generally that the 11 approved Ghanaian languages should be used as the medium of instruction in the first three years of the primary course, and where possible, in the next three years as well. The policy was revised in 2002 making English the only approved medium of instruction in all primary schools (Ministry of Education 2002; Opoku-Amankwa 2009). In 2008, the new Education Reforms reverted that policy, making a Ghanaian language the medium of instruction from Primary Class 1 to 3 and English language the medium of instruction thereafter (Government of Ghana 2008). Even then, the wording in the policy does not commit the state to ensuring that Ghanaian language is used: rather, the policy states that the Ghanaian language will be used as

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the medium of instruction ‘where feasible’ (Government of Ghana 2008).

This leaves the door open for different types of interpretation and implementation models to the disadvantage of the Ghanaian child.

Language policy is always a politically charged affair in multilingual countries. Over time the decision to use the English language or a Ghanaian language as the language of instruction in primary schools has been made not on educational grounds alone and it is always met with mistrust and misunderstanding from sections of the community with little consideration for the good of the learners. As a result, Ghana, as with a number of other African countries, has no clear, unambiguous language policy, and there is always a gap between the language policy and language use in schools (Heugh 2008; Pinnock 2009).

Hawes (1979) notes that regardless of swings and ambiguity in language policy, it is commonplace for schools and teachers to choose their own language of communication and instruction, either explicitly or implicitly, both in the moment and over time. This is borne out of pure necessity. In the end, language choice may be influenced by official policy, the community’s language attitudes and of course the need to make meaning in teacher/student interaction, using ‘what language the teacher can teach and what language the children can best understand’ (Hawes 1979, 111). Thus all sorts of patterns may emerge, with different schools utilising different local policies and in some cases lessons being taught in more than two languages.

The role of English

As the language policy has seesawed on the role of Ghanaian languages in education, it has always placed English at the centre. From colonial times to the present, English has retained its preeminent status in Ghana as the language of career advancement. Excellent English communication skills are vital for success in most professions in Ghana (Adika 2012; Anyidoho 2012). Opoku-Amankwa (2009) posits that Ghanaian parents are of the view that the very purpose of education is to learn to speak and write in English, echoing Brock-Utne (2010), who observes that ‘education means primarily learning English for many Africans in the so-called Anglophone Africa.

This includes parents and students as well as African governments’ (641).

Despite evidence that children learn better when they are taught in their own languages (e.g. Walter 2013), parents still support English-only instruction (Hartwell 2010). Reasons for this include distrust of policy developers and donor or foreign experts, and the government’s attempts to bridge the urban/ rural divide and create a classless society.

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Certainly the value of learning an international language cannot be contested, and that is the case in Ghana with regard to English. The language policy recognises the value of the English language by identifying it as the medium of instruction beginning in Class 4, but it is silent on English learning. Few Ghanaian children live in a language environment that would enable them to acquire English naturally. English is required as a subject from Primary 1, but the English language syllabus does not take into account research on communicative approaches to second-language learning. Nor does it address the need to introduce English reading only after children have learned how to read in the Ghanaian language they know well. This weakness in curriculum, combined with traditions of rote learning, means that many children are not able to develop the level of English proficiency that they need in order to succeed at school and in the workforce.

Indeed, shifting instruction from an Indigenous language to English at Primary 4, which implies an early exit model of local language instruction, has not been effective across Africa or elsewhere (Prah 2009). Writing on the language of education in Tanzania, Qorro (2009) indicates that teachers and children always have difficulty in expressing themselves in the English language, resulting in students’ poor performance not only in learning the subject matter but also in learning English. Similar conditions are not uncommon in Ghana’s primary schools (Opoku-Amankwa 2009).

Implementation of the language-of-instruction policy

As a result of this inconsistency in the language policy, pressure for English, and lack of official support for the language policy, there has been an enduring disconnect between language policy and teacher training, teacher deployment and primary school curriculum development, all of which proceed without attention to teaching and learning in a Ghanaian language (Hartwell 2010). Consequently, very little learning takes place in primary schools, as seen in the results of the Ghana National Education Assessment (Ministry of Education 2013), primarily because children are not being educated consistently in a language they can understand. In his study of Ghana’s language policy, Opoku-Amankwa found that as a result of English being used as a medium of instruction, classroom interaction was teacher-centred ‘as many pupils are unable to communicate fluently in English . . . Indeed, it can be argued that participants in our case-study school are colluding in an elaborate pretence: the teacher pretends to be teaching and the pupils pretend to be learning’ (Opoku-Amankwa 2009, 128–30).

Pinnock (2009) notes that the language of instruction is the critical factor in the low achievement of learners across the developing world especially in

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the many situations like Ghana where children do not use the school language at home. She cites a number of studies to confirm this assertion – including the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), a test of Mathematics and Science ability conducted in 36 countries at Grade 4 and 48 countries at Grade 8, and assessments from the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality (SACMEQ II) from 2000 to 2002. These assessments consistently show that teaching children in a language they do not use at home and in their daily lives results in poor performance in literacy, numeracy and other areas of learning (Pinnock 2009; Alidou et al. 2006).

If formal education is to succeed in helping children to build the necessary knowledge and skills to be productive, then surely it must be delivered in a medium that children and teachers can use in building knowledge together.

Broadly, children learn best in the language that they use most expertly, most often and at home. Using a local language for instruction will not guarantee success in children’s learning (Pinnock 2009), but instruction in a language they do not know is clearly ineffective. Thus, integral to improving instruction in Ghana is a language policy that protects the place of Ghanaian languages in schools and an educational policy that implements it.

A model for successful mother-tongue instruction

If language policy and related educational policy overlook the research on language and literacy, then language and literacy learning can be desultory, as it is in many African countries despite hefty economic investment in the education sector (Dubeck et al. 2012; O’Sullivan 2003). But innovative Indigenous programmes that support learning in children’s mother tongue can inform and inspire governments that are mired in ineffective, politically driven policies; counter-productive traditions of teacher education and deployment, as well as stale textbook production in languages that children do not know; and out-of-date instructional practices that involve students only superficially. In Ghana, the School for Life programme described below provides such a model. It successfully addresses one of the core objectives of the formal school curriculum – children acquiring literacy (Government of Ghana 2008; Ghana Education Service 2007).

This programme was the focus of a comparative study utilising quantitative and qualitative methods for documentary analysis, student assessment, lesson observation and in-depth interviews with various stakeholders (Arkorful 2013). Documentary analysis involved scrutiny of curriculum materials both for School for Life and the formal primary school. Given that School for Life graduates generally enter the formal school at Primary 4, the

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assumption is that they have covered the lower primary requirements of state education. The study entailed an analysis of the syllabi for English Language, Ghanaian Language and Mathematics, for comparison with the complementary education programme’s curriculum. Students’ texts and teachers’ guides used under the two systems were also examined closely to determine any thematic and/or content linkages and to assess whether the School for Life curriculum met the requirements of lower primary school. A different level of document review examined students’ written work and teachers’ lesson plans (for classes which were observed) to determine the extent to which they correlated with the requirements of the syllabus.

Because the study focused on assessing the curriculum as received by learners, it involved administering English and Mathematics tests to Primary 4 and Primary 6 students at ten randomly selected formal schools in the district where the research was conducted. In total, 387 students (200 Primary 4 and 187 Primary 6) participated in the assessment, out of which 150 in both grades were School for Life graduates. The study utilised the 2009 National Education Assessment English and Mathematics test instruments.

Structured classroom observation was conducted both in School for Life and formal school classrooms to gauge teachers’ competency in 20 elements of effective teaching, including the teaching of reading.

Interviews were carried out with School for Life instructional facilitators and community members. Discussions with parents and community leaders centred on their experiences with School for Life, in particular their perceptions of children’s learning and how it compared with that of children in the community who had attended the government school since Primary 1, rather than attending School for Life and then transfering into Primary 4.

The following sections show how instruction is developed and delivered in School for Life compared to the formal school; how the use of local language and a functional curriculum promotes social construction of knowledge; and the lessons that can be learned from School for Life for formal school instruction and ultimately for language-in-education policy in Ghana.

School for Life School for Life is an accelerated functional literacy and numeracy programme that provides opportunities for out-of-school children, aged 8 to 14, in marginalised communities to learn in their own language and to eventually access formal education. The programme complements the state education system

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by serving children in hard-to-reach communities and those who for socioeconomic reasons do not have access to formal primary school (however, parents in communities with both a School for Life programme and a formal school sometimes opt for the complementary programme for reasons that are suggested below). School for Life was introduced in the Northern Region in 1995. Students attend School for Life classes for three hours a day, five days a week, for nine months. Classes are held in the local community school (if there is one) after formal classes close in the afternoon or in any convenient space designated by the community. Each class has a maximum of 25 learners, preferably 13 girls and 12 boys. Where there are more than 25 children in a community, priority is given to the older ones (that is, 14 years downwards).

Classes are conducted by volunteer facilitators who are literate in their mother tongue and are recruited from and by the community to teach the course. These facilitators are given an initial three-week intensive training course, follow-up refresher training workshops and support by School for Life field staff. To date, the programme has succeeded in enrolling more than 150 000 children, over 70% of whom have been integrated into the formal education sector (School for Life 2010). Performance of School for Life graduates on the National Education Assessment in Math and English (a subject not addressed by School for Life) during their first year in formal education (Class 4) is roughly equivalent to that of children who enrolled there in Class 1 (Arkorful 2013).

The School for Life curriculum is based on meeting the requirements for literacy and numeracy learning in the first three years of formal education. It does not directly address other subjects taught in formal schools, including English. This arrangement begs the question of how the learners gain the ability to proceed in the formal system once they enrol, since instruction there involves English. The School for Life curriculum assists learners to acquire individually and socially useful knowledge, building on what they learn at home, such as personal hygiene, environmental sanitation, good farming practice, and so forth. Pedagogical practices have been described as child-centred, active and participatory, as illustrated in the next section (Farrell and Hartwell 2008).

School for Life effectiveness has been attributed to the following factors, which contrast with practice in the formal schools: • Mother tongue medium of instruction • Simple and effective methodology: use of syllabic and phonic methods in the teaching of literacy • A book ratio of one to one

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• Availability of books for children to take home • Small class sizes (25 maximum) • A high degree of monitoring, on-site supervision and training for instructors provided by programme administrators • The commitment of School for Life facilitators to their students’ learning • Flexible school hours adjusted to the needs of the community.

(Casely-Hayford and Adom Ghartey 2007) The flow of a lesson

This section describes instructional activities in a typical School for Life class in order to demonstrate both the cultural relevance of the lessons and their constructive dimension, based on interaction among students and facilitator.

Typically lessons begin with the facilitator handling administrative matters such as registration and making sure that students have the necessary materials for the afternoon’s activities. Then the facilitator reviews the previous lesson, usually through questioning. Next s/he introduces the topic of the new lesson, which is usually written on the board, and develops it at some length through explanation, incorporating questions and weaving students’ responses into the process. One or more examples, usually taken from the teacher manual or the student primer, are worked out on the board and discussed. The first excerpt below presents the researcher’s perspective on the lesson; the second one incorporates instructor and student academic interaction.

Excerpt One It is 3.00 p.m. and I am waiting for the School for Life class to begin at Gbulahagu Primary School [This class is held in the community’s government school building]. According to the local committee chairman, the School for Life has been running in the community for the past ten years; the community really likes the School for Life classes, which have become almost part of the community’s institutional structure. Given this background and also having gleaned from conversations with School for Life staff that lessons start at 3.00 p.m., I decide to wait for the class after the close of formal school.

Fifteen minutes later, no School for Life learners have arrived and I begin to wonder whether today is one of the days when there is no class, as I have been given to understand that the School for Life class has two days off each week. Children start trickling in at 3.20. This gives me some hope that I have not been waiting in vain. In the next ten minutes, all the children are accounted for as well as the facilitator, who gets in at 3.25. There do not seem to be any worries at all on the part of either facilitator or learners that lessons are starting almost half an hour later than scheduled.