Teachers’ shifting language ideologies and teaching practices in Philippine mother tongue classrooms

Abstract

Though attracting some attention since its implementation, only a few scholars have closely examined how the Philippines’ Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) policy gets enacted at the classroom level. This study critically examines how elementary teachers’ language ideologies and teaching practices changed since the country institutionalized said policy. Using ethnographic methods, the researcher collected the data over 14 weeks in a predominantly Cebuano-speaking public elementary school in Northern Mindanao. The findings reveal that the elementary teachers were initially antagonistic toward MTB-MLE, but their attitude gradually shifted as they realized the pedagogical and learning benefits of mother tongue instruction in their own context. The study also found that translanguaging is often deployed by both teachers and students in order to negotiate and resist language standardization and the idealization of Cebuano native speakers as a result of the implementation of MTB-MLE. Moreover, the English-only ideology has continued to challenge the legitimacy and value of MTB-MLE, as learning English is often invoked by some teachers as a means to participate in a globalized world. This paper concludes by arguing that engaging both preservice and in-service teachers not only in MTB-MLE trainings and workshops but also in ideological conversations on multilingual education is a necessary step toward reversing the inequalities and challenges of MTB-MLE in the Philippines.