Critical Community Language Policies in Education

Abstract

This chapter first offers an overview of critical community language policy and planning in education (CCLPE). It provides an example of CCLPE, focusing on Malaita in the wake of the Tenson (ethnic conflict) between Guadalcanal and Malaita in Solomon Islands (SI) (1998–2007). The authors contextualize their analysis by tracing the turning points for LPP in SI history, and discuss implications of the SI case for CCLPE and the future of SI education. The analysis focuses on local processes of uncertainty and instability in times of rapid social change that undermine community faith in the nation-state. The chapter shows that indigenous communities have learned that they can exert their agency to shape LPP from the bottom up, and that the shaping must be grounded in indigenous language(s) and culture(s). This argument is consistent with the call for epistemological and ontological diversity in development theory, education, and related studies.