Ideological and implementational spaces for multilingual education : a case study in Vanuatu

• Main Author: Willans, Fiona
• Other Authors: Leung, Constant; Androutsopoulos, Ioannis
• Published: King's College London (University of London) 2014
• Subjects: 370.117
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.656898

This study is a discourse-oriented ethnographic investigation of language-in-education policy in Vanuatu. Following a period of joint Anglo-French colonial rule, education currently follows a dual-submersion model, in which children are enrolled in either English-medium or French-medium schools, while the remaining 106 languages are excluded. A case study of one English-medium school and one French-medium school demonstrates that a single language (either English or French) is constructed as the only appropriate language of each institution, but that this construction is challenged in two ways. It is, firstly, undermined by the heteroglossic reality of daily language practices. Teachers and learners make use of multiple linguistic resources in order to negotiate their school lives, using only just enough English or French to conform to the monolingual ideal. It is, secondly, contradicted by the desire for ‘bilingualism’ in English and French, as the vestiges of Vanuatu’s double colonial heritage have been reimagined in unexpected ways. The dual legacy has been transformed from being a reminder of an oppressive and burdensome past to being both a gateway to double opportunity and a marker of a ‘bilingual’ national identity that should be celebrated. The thesis examines the way participants mediate the tension between competing conceptualisations of ‘language’ and ‘languages’ in education. It considers whether ideological and implementational spaces (Hornberger, 2002) can be found amongst the contestation for the incorporation of alternative or additional linguistic resources. It suggests the need to rethink the notion of media of instruction, and to look for ways to foster the productive use of repertoires of learning and teaching, drawing on whichever resources are available to be used. In so doing, it reorients the problem from an approach to education policy and planning that is driven by language, to an approach to language policy and planning that is driven by learning.