Language Issues In Comparative Education

This volume compiles a unique yet complementary collection of chapters that take a strategic comparative perspective on education systems, regions of the world, and/or ethnolinguistic communities with a focus on non-dominant languages and cultures in education. Comparison and contrast within each article and across articles illustrates the potential for using home languages – which in many cases are in non-dominant positions relative to other languages in society – in inclusive multilingual and multicultural forms of education. The 22 authors demonstrate how bringing non-dominant languages and cultures into schooling has liberatory, transformative potential for learners from ethnolinguistic communities that have previously been excluded from access to quality basic education. The authors deal not only with educational development in specific low-income and emerging countries in Asia (Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Philippines Thailand and Vietnam), Latin America (Guatemala and Mexico) and Africa (Mozambique, Senegal and Tanzania), but also with efforts to reach marginalized ethnolinguistic communities in high-income North American countries (Canada and the USA). In the introductory chapter the editors highlight common and cross-cutting themes and propose appropriate, sometimes new terminology for the discussion of linguistic and cultural issues in education, particularly in low-income multilingual countries. Likewise, using examples from additional countries and contexts, the three final chapters address cross-cutting issues related to language and culture in educational research and development. The authors and editors of this volume share a common commitment to comparativism in their methods and analysis, and aim to contribute to more inclusive and relevant education for all. “A richly textured collection which offers a powerful vision of the possible, now and in the future.” Alamin Mazrui, Rutgers State University of New Jersey, USA “This book takes the local perspective of non-dominant language communities in arguing for a multilingual habitus in educational development. Benson and Kosonen masterfully extend theories and clarify terminology that is inclusive of the non-dominant contexts described here.” Ofelia García, City University of New York, USA

This second volume of Language Issues in Comparative Education, following the tradition of the first, introduces the state of the field and calls attention to innovations described throughout. The chapters examine language-in-education policy change, describe implementational activities, and present strategic frameworks for research and advocacy.

Draws on comparative education to offer an insight into the development of modern foreign language learning.

In the newly emerging global economic order governments and policy makers are keen to seek ideas from other countries and recognise the importance of looking comparatively. This expansion of interest in comparative education brings new challenges for the discipline: research may be undertaken by non-specialists (by consultants and politicians or educationists from quite different backgrounds); the short lifespan of democratically elected governments may lend attraction to ‘quick-fix’ solutions; statistics and data may be decontextualised. Added to these challenges there is the worldwide proliferation of education providers outside state control and the transformation of teaching and learning brought about by the new information technology. This book rethinks the role of comparative education in the light of these changing circumstances and looks at the new opportunities they bring.

This is a core text for graduate-level Comparative Education courses. With its cross-cultural, isues-oriented approach, Comparative Education introduces K-12 educational systems worldwide. Readers are invited to consider current educational issues both at home and abroad, while developing global perspectives and skills of comparative inquiry to use their own reflective classroom teaching. Chapters on theory in compartive education, frameworks for analyzing educational issues, and globalization's implications for education explore several key issues in depth: purposes of schooling, educational access and opportunity, education accountability and authority, and teacher professionalism. This book takes an issues-based approach rather than a country-based approach. A major purpose of this book is to widen the field of comparative education's influence by articulating the relevance of comparative education to include a larger, practitioner-oriented audience.

This is a core text for graduate-level Comparative Education courses. With its cross-cultural, isues-oriented approach, Comparative Education introduces K-12 educational systems worldwide. Readers are invited to consider current educational issues both at home and abroad, while developing global perspectives and skills of comparative inquiry to use their own reflective classroom teaching. Chapters on theory in compartive education, frameworks for analyzing educational issues, and globalization's implications for education explore several key issues in depth: purposes of schooling, educational access and opportunity, education accountability and authority, and teacher professionalism. This book takes an issues-based approach rather than a country-based approach. A major purpose of this book is to widen the field of comparative education's influence by articulating the relevance of comparative education to include a larger, practitioner-oriented audience.

The theme of this book cuts across disciplines. Contributors to this volume are specialized in education and especially classroom research as well as in linguistics, most being transdisciplinary themselves. Around 65 sub-Saharan languages figure in this volume as research objects: as means of instruction, in connection with teacher training, language policy, lexical development, harmonization efforts, information technology, oral literature and deaf communities. The co-existence of these African languages with English, French and Arabic is examined as well. This wide range of languages and subjects builds on recent field work, giving new empirical evidence from 17 countries: Botswana, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, as well as to transnational matters like the harmonization of African transborder languages. As the Editors – a Norwegian social scientist and a Norwegian linguist, both working in Africa – have wanted to give room for African voices, the majority of contributions to this volume come from Africa.

Almost every Education Studies degree includes an element of comparative education, and this book provides an accessible undergraduate-level introduction to the theme. It begins by defining what is meant by the term ′comparative education′ and examines the benefits of studying it to students, policy makers, educators and academics. The book then takes a largely age-phase approach with a comparative analysis of selected education systems from around the world, including the impact of globalisation.