Language and Education in Multilingual Settings

The difference between languages that children learn in the home (their mother tongues) and the languages valued by society and established as the medium of instruction in schools is an almost universal problem in educational systems. Proposals for mother tongue education for bilingual programmes of various kinds or for more effective teaching of literary or standard languages all depend on an understanding of the underlying problem of language education in multilingual settings. The writers of Language and Education in Multilingual Settings do not have a single view of the issues for they are international in background and experience and interdisciplinary in training and approach; moreover as will be clear they differ in political and philosophical beliefs in scholarly rhetoric in research paradigms and in personal circumstances. In this book researchers from India Yugoslavia the USSR the USA New Zealand Zambia Denmark Australia and Israel discuss practice and theory in various parts of the world.