Abstract
The relevance of the problem range addressed in the study is conditioned by the system of education functioning under multiculturalism in modern polyethnic societies and their social stability much depending on the balanced use of languages of ethnoses that reside in the region as well as on the respectful attitude to their representatives in daily life. Thus, the system of education has to take into account the ethnic and religious, political, social and cultural requirements of the society offering high-quality education to the consumers according to their expectations. The objective of the paper consists in revealing the topical problems of regional educational reforms aimed at implementing the principle of bilingualism in polyethnic and polyreligious region of Russia – the Republic of Tatarstan. The representative mass survey of population of the Republic of Tatarstan and a series of in-depth narrative interviews with representatives of various generations of Tatarstan citizens as the main methods used in the research. Based on the sociological survey conducted within the research project Dynamics of real and conventional generations in information polyethnic and polyreligious society (a case study of the Republic of Tatarstan), the following findings have been made. Scientific justification of the language policy being implemented in the republic and of the methodological support of bilingual educational programs are of poor level. A higher education system segregated according to the information carrier language prevails. There also remains a crossover controversy expressed in discontent in both Russian-speaking and to a significant extent Tatar-speaking urban population with the school educational policy of bilingualism. Results of the research cited in the paper can be used by the state authorities of the republic for elaborating the optimum bilingual language policy as well as in the practice of educational institutions implementing the bilingual education.
Highlights
Post-modern societies develop in conditions of multiculturalism which brings about the necessity of a balanced ethnic and religious policy, and in particular, language policy
While working out the policy of functioning and development of educational institutions, the interests of ethnic groups have to be taken into consideration and an optimum proportion of two or more languages teaching has to be implemented in educational programs
The tasks of the research consisted in the following: - revealing the particularities of the Tatar citizens' language identity; - characterizing the attitude of various age cohorts of the population of Tatarstan towards educational programs implemented with the principles of bilingualism at the republic's educational institutions; - describing the extent of acceptance/rejection of individual ways of mastering the two languages among the learners and their parents; - identifying the problems of teaching the Russian and Tatar languages at educational institutions; - finding out the opportunities for overcoming the crossover controversy in implementation of bilingualism at educational institutions of the Republic of Tatarstan
Summary
Post-modern societies develop in conditions of multiculturalism which brings about the necessity of a balanced ethnic and religious policy, and in particular, language policy. 2017: 8 (2), 15-38 population is maintaining and developing the languages of the most numerous ethnoses residing in the region by teaching these languages at educational institutions. The optimum proportion of the ethnic groups' interests in educational programs allows using the languages of the ethnoses in a balanced manner while maintaining their tolerant attitude to each other. One of the important questions in the sphere of education is the implementation of bilingualism or multilingualism policy in areas with ethnically diverse composition of population (Byker & Marquardt, 2016, Kopish, 2016). While working out the policy of functioning and development of educational institutions, the interests of ethnic groups have to be taken into consideration and an optimum proportion of two or more languages teaching has to be implemented in educational programs. Any biases towards any certain language are promptly responded to by the public
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