Teaching & Learning Guide for: Multilingualism in Educational Contexts: Identities and Ideologies

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This Teaching and Learning Guide is intended to provide instructors of courses in Sociolinguistics some guidance in incorporating the topic of multilingualism in educational contexts into their syllabi. Although schools the world over are increasingly serving multilingual populations, awareness of this reality has not, in many cases, sifted through to public consciousness, and incorporation of this topic into the sociolinguistic curriculum is a crucial step in addressing this gap in awareness. The incidence of multilingualism in educational contexts has increased greatly in the last few decades in a number of critical ways. First, while multilingualism has long been the norm in educational settings in places such as India and some countries of Africa, widespread multilingualism has only recently begun to be seen as a factor in education in many parts of the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Second, in addition to there being more regions of the world that have multilingual populations of schoolchildren, the demographics of these populations are also changing. There are increasing numbers of middle class professionals moving to countries in which immigrants were previously overwhelmingly citizens of poor countries who came to work unskilled jobs. Third, not only have different patterns of immigration led to a broader range of regions and social groups becoming multilingual, but the ability to speak more than one language is increasingly seen as desirable for those who stay put. Bilingual education or intensive language study for the children of majority language populations is gaining popularity in Europe, the United States, and Asia. What this amounts to is that multilingualism in schools is becoming more common, and the situations in which it occurs are as varied as the languages involved. This article addresses the social issues of language ideologies and identity construction in this context.