Multilingual Education and Sustainable Diversity Work：From Periphery to Center

This very original, inspirational book globalises our understanding of languages in education and changes our understanding of bilingual and multilingual education from something mostly western to being truly transnational: it spotlights the small, celebrates African and Asian cases of multilingual classrooms and demonstrates that such education is universally successful.
Colin R. Baker, Pro Vice-Chancellor, Bangor University, Bangor, Wales, UK
A norm-setting work on multilingual education, which combines theoretical perspectives with practical experience from different parts of the globe, this book demonstrates convincingly not only that multilingual education works, but also that, for most developing countries, there is no viable alternative.
Ayo Bamgbose, Professor Emeritus, University of Ibadan, Nigeria
This excellent volume brings to light the fascinating lived experiences of multilingual education in linguistically rich but resource impoverished countries, and offers important lessons from which we can all learn.
Amy B. M. Tsui, Professor , Pro Vice-Chancellor & Vice President, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong


This is a book of hope and inspiration. Documenting the significant shift that is taking place in countries around the world in the status and legitimacy of mother tongue-based multilingual education, it represents a giant step towards a "tipping point" where mother tongue-based multilingual education will be normalized as the preferred and, in fact, common sense option for educating the children of the world.
Jim Cummins, The University of Toronto, Canada
This important book challenges us to think about multilingual education from a different angle––this time putting the periphery at the center. The effect is one of destabilizing old visions and imagining new worlds where multilingual education provides the backdrop for generous understandings of all peoples.
Ofelia García, Program in Urban Education, Graduate Center/The City University of New York, USA
There are regrettably few detailed accounts of successful elementary school instruction in the pupils' home language, which makes this book with its surprising examples (especially Ethiopia and Nepal but other third world cases) so relevant. Students of language education policy will learn a great deal about the possibility of multilingual education from the chapters of this important book.
Bernard Spolsky, Professor Emeritus, Bar-Ilan University, Israel

At least half of today’s languages are marginalised and endangered and the attention of the world needs to be focused on these minor and minority languages together with the value of multilingualism. If the book succeeds in enhancing the consciousness of the world towards predicaments of the third world, then its efforts will have been amply rewarded.
Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Former Director, Central Institute of Indian Languages, India



Drawing on the most powerful and compelling research data to date and connecting this research to linguistic human rights, this book explores the conditions and practices of robust bilingual and multilingual educational innovations in both system-wide and minority-settings and what it is that makes these viable. It demonstrates how, in countries where educational practices are inclusive of linguistic diversity and responsive to local conditions and community participation, implementation of bilingual education even within limited budgetary investment can be successful.

Tove Skutnabb-Kangas is Associate Professor (Retired), University of Roskilde, Denmark and Associate Professor, Åbo Akademi University, Finland.


Kathleen Heugh is Senior Lecturer, English Language, University of South Australia and Extraordinary Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of the Western Cape, South Africa.

Foreword Adama Ouane
"Who Am I?" Dainess Maganda
Acknowledgments
Notes on terminology

Introduction: Reclaiming sustainable linguistic diversity and multilingual education Tove Skutnabb-Kangas and Kathleen Heugh



Education in Ethiopian Primary Schools Multilingual

Carol Benson, Kathleen Heugh, Berhanu Bogale, and Mekonnen Alemu Gebre Yohannes


Language Choice, Education Equity, and Mother Tongue Schooling: Comparing the Cases of Ethiopia and Native America

Teresa McCarty


Language and Culture in Education: Comparing Policies and Practices in Peru and Ethiopia

Susanne Pérez Jacobsen and Lucy Trapnell Forero


Carol Benson and Kimmo Kosonen: A Critical Comparison of Language-in-Education Policy and Practice in Dour Southeast Asian Countries and Ethiopia



MLE and the Double Divide in Multilingual Societies: Comparing Policy and Practice in India and Ethiopia

Ajit Mohanty


Enhancing Quality Education for All in Nepal Through Indigenised MLE: The Challenge to Teach in Over a Hundred Languages

Iina Nurmela, Lava Deo Awasthi, and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas


MLE from Ethiopia to Nepal: Rrefining a Success Story

Shelley K. Taylor


Setting a Tradition of Mother Tongue Medium Education in 'Francophone' Africa: The Case of Burkina Faso

Norbert Nikièma and Paul Taryam Ilboudo


‘There Is No Such Thing As "Keeping Out pf Politics"’: Arabisation and Amazigh/Berber Mother Tongue Education in Morocco

Ahmed Kabel


Implications for Multilingual Education: Student Achievement in Different Models of Education in Ethiopia

Kathleen Heugh, Carol Benson, Mekonnen Alemu Gebre Yohannes and Berhanu Bogale


‘Peripheries’ Take Centre Stage: Reinterpreted Multilingual Education Works

Kathleen Heugh and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas

About the Authors
Index