Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Chapter 7 Language education policy and the medium of instruction issue in post-colonial Africa In this chapter we return to an issue first discussed in relation to minority language speakers in the United States: the medium of instruction, and specifically the role of pupils’ home languages in the educational process. On this occasion, however, the focus is on the very different context of the multilingual post-colonial states of Africa, where the choice of instructional medium is the key issue in language planning in education. It is also a highly controversial one, with many academic commentators (e.g. Barrett 1994, Phillipson 1992, Rubagumya 1990, Trappes- Lomax 1990, Williams and Cooke 2002, Stroud 2003, Alidou 2004, Mazrui 2004) calling for the use of English and other former colonial languages to be restricted in favour of a greater role for African languages. This is seen as necessary for (1) promoting the development of indigenous languages, (2) improving the educational performance of pupils, particularly the less able and (3) mitigating the inequalities which are aggravated by the use of official languages of foreign origin over which large sectors of the population have little or no control. This chapter reviews some of these arguments, but our focus will not so much be on the educational merits of the use of home languages (i.e. local indigenous languages), extensively discussed in Chapter 3, as on the socio-political constraints shaping language education policy. The justification for this selectivity is that advocacy of educationally justifiable policy reforms is more likely in the end to be persuasive if it is borne in mind that policies on instruction media are as much politically as educationally motivated. Indeed, as Tollefson and Tsui (2004b: 2) remark in the introduction to their volume, it is common for the educational case for reform to be trumped by political, social or economic agendas. Consideration of these agendas in the course of the chapter, and of accompanying socio-political and practical constraints, leads us to the view that there are, in fact, formidable impediments to radical reform, at least in the immediate future. This does not mean, we argue, that applied linguists seeking to influence policy should desist from advocacy of a greater role for indigenous languages, but that they would be well advised to investigate simultaneously how current educational practices might be improved and how the educational disadvantages associated with foreign language media might be mitigated.
180 Language Planning and Education We turn first, however, to an overview of current policies on media of instruction in sub-Saharan Africa, and to the problems attached to them. 7.1 CURRENT POLICIES ON MEDIA OF INSTRUCTION: ARTICULATING THE PROBLEM The tendency in much of anglophone Africa, with a few interesting exceptions, 1 is for education to be conducted through an indigenous language medium2 for the first three or four years of primary education, with a switch taking place thereafter to exclusively English medium instruction. In Lusophone and Francophone Africa, by contrast, Portuguese and French respectively tend to be the official languages of instruction from the start, though in certain countries (e.g. Mozambique: see Benson 2000) this policy is under review following relatively successful experimentation with bilingual media inclusive of local languages. 3 Table 7.1 summarises the situation in a limited but not unrepresentative range of mainly anglophone countries. This, of course, is only a portrait of official policies. The actual situation on the ground is a good deal more complicated in that it is very common for teaching in the local language, or some combination of the local indigenous language and the exoglossic official language medium, to continue for some years after the official switch of medium, producing a de facto bilingual medium. One of the principal reasons for this classroom code-switching is simply that teachers find it necessary to make themselves understood by pupils who have only limited proficiency in the official language medium. 7.1.1 Media of education in lower primary school There is widespread academic agreement that the mother tongue or a local language well known in the community is, in principle, the most suitable medium for education in the initial years of education. Put briefly, the educational argument is that cognitive development and subject learning is best fostered through teaching in a language the child knows well. Instruction in a language familiar to pupils improves immeasurably the quality of interaction between teacher and pupil. It also narrows the psychological gulf between home and school, integrates the school better into the local community and gives recognition to the language and culture the child brings to school with positive effects on the self-esteem of individuals and local communities (see Benson 2002). The work of Cummins (1979, 1984) and others suggests, moreover, that consolidation of the child’s L1 facilitates subsequent acquisition of a second language (see Chapter 3). In spite of equivocal early research findings (e.g. Engle 1975), these arguments are increasingly bolstered by empirical evidence. For example, in a recent study Williams (1996) shows that fifth-year primary pupils in Malawi, where the medium until grade 4 is Chichewa, have no worse reading abilities in English than primary five pupils in Zambia, where the official medium is English from grade 1. Moreover, the
Page 1 and 2:
Language Planning and Education GIB
Page 3 and 4:
Edinburgh Textbooks in Applied Ling
Page 5 and 6:
© Gibson Ferguson, 2006 Edinburgh
Page 7 and 8:
vi Contents 5 The global spread of
Page 9 and 10:
viii Series Editors’ Preface Each
Page 11 and 12:
x Author’s Preface exception of C
Page 13 and 14:
Acknowledgements Identifying and th
Page 15 and 16:
2 Language Planning and Education m
Page 17 and 18:
4 Language Planning and Education c
Page 19 and 20:
6 Language Planning and Education h
Page 21 and 22:
8 Language Planning and Education t
Page 23 and 24:
10 Language Planning and Education
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Chapter 2 The practice of language
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
Page 77 and 78:
Page 79 and 80:
Page 81 and 82:
Page 83 and 84:
Page 85 and 86:
Page 87 and 88:
Page 89 and 90:
Page 91 and 92:
Page 93 and 94:
Page 95 and 96:
Page 97 and 98:
Page 99 and 100:
Page 101 and 102:
Page 103 and 104:
Page 105 and 106:
Page 107 and 108:
Page 109 and 110:
Page 111 and 112:
Page 113 and 114:
Page 115 and 116:
Page 117 and 118:
Page 119 and 120:
Page 121 and 122:
Page 123 and 124:
Chapter 5 The global spread of Engl
Page 125 and 126:
Page 127 and 128:
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Page 135 and 136:
Page 137 and 138:
Page 139 and 140:
Page 141 and 142: 128 Language Planning and Education
Page 191: 178 Language Planning and Education
Page 243 and 244:
Page 245 and 246:
Page 247 and 248:
Page 249 and 250:
Page 251 and 252:
Page 253 and 254:
Page 255 and 256:
show all

Gibson Ferguson Language Planning and Education Edinburgh ...

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?