Abstract

After the restoration of independence in 1991, Estonia continued with a parallel school system with separate public schools operating for Russian- and Estonian-speaking children. Seen as a developmental ‘growing pains’ of a transitional state, during the last 27 years the separate school system has contributed to infrastructural difficulties, educational injustice, and societal segregation. This article investigates the role of private schools in addressing this injustice from the analytical angle of new institutionalism, structuration and intergroup contact theories. How do these institutions challenge and aim at changing the state language regime or path dependency in the language of education? Two case studies are presented in this article: The Open School, established in 2017 for children with different home language backgrounds and targeting trilingual competences; The Sakala Private School, established in 2009, offering trilingual education with Russian as a medium of instruction. During this period of nation-state rebuilding and globalization, we investigate whether developing a multilingual habitus is a way to address the issue of social cohesion in the Estonian society in. So far, no other studies of private initiatives in Estonian language acquisition planning have been done.

Highlights

  • We claim that the link between Language Acquisition Planning (LAP) and democratization is a twoway process; we argue that plurilingual education, based on the current view on plurilingualism as a cultural and societal enrichment, requires a certain level of democratization in a society

  • This is the first study addressing the role of private schools in paving the way to change in LAP in Estonia; we argue that initiatives like these are necessary for finding an alternative solution to the problems of separate education and segregation in the Estonian society

  • None of the two schools have an explicit intention to change LAP, rather, they are interested in running an inclusive institution that educates engaged and openminded citizens able to manage the future society

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Summary

Introduction

We claim that the link between Language Acquisition Planning (LAP) and democratization is a twoway process; we argue that plurilingual education, based on the current view on plurilingualism as a cultural and societal enrichment, requires a certain level of democratization in a society. We contribute to the increasing body of research that studies the role of language policy agents other than the state, in Estonia in facilitating change (Siiner, Koreinik, & Brown, 2017) To our knowledge, this is the first study addressing the role of private schools in paving the way to change in LAP in Estonia; we argue that initiatives like these are necessary for finding an alternative solution to the problems of separate education and segregation in the Estonian society. We present case studies of two private schools from Tallinn, the capital of Estonia, that provide multilingual education and are open to both Estonian and Russian speaking children We conceptualize these initiatives as private language policy agents aiming at changing the separate school system that has been a serious upset to social cohesion. We finish this article with a discussion of the social action and process our cases indicate, and the changes they might bring to language education policy in the future

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