School Language Policies
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SCHOOL LANGUAGE POLICIES
INTRODUCTION
This chapter considers developments in school language policies in the last decade. Such policies are often developed at a national level using mechanisms such as those discussed by Sue Wright (2004). However, these same policies may not always find their way to implementation at the school level. Stephen May (1997) defined a school language policy as “a policy document aimed at addressing the particular language needs of a school” (p. 229). Such a document should therefore centralize language in learning and address the relevant diverse language needs of its student population, especially if, as May argues, it is developed in consultation with the wider school community. How that consultation should or might take place, or what constitutes the wider school community, is not explained. Once complete however, the policy should identify “areas within school organisation, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment where specific language needs exist” and indicate directions and methods for dealing with specific issues, “within a discretionary and flexible framework” that also includes mechanisms for review and monitoring (May, 1997, p. 299). Corson (1999), who was influential in initiating this school-based language policy research, endorsed this view of the role and purpose of a language policy. He argued that a language policy provides schools with a specific direction in dealing with the issues, challenges, and possibilities that diversity and disparate learning needs pose. His work (see also Corson, 1990, 1993) explored the role of language policies in schools, and how they might serve the needs of diverse students. Such policies, he noted, were often accompanied by professional development to influence teachers’ practices and beliefs. School language policies can also be centrally and politically driven. Coady and O’Laoire (2002) document this as they explain the mechanisms of the resurgence of Gaelic in the Republic of Ireland, where it became “a subject taught to bolster the government’s aim of fostering an Irish-speaking identity on behalf of the nation” (p. 143).
S. May and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 1: Language Policy and Political Issues in Education, 243–252. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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NOELINE WRIGHT
Language Policies and Literacy The aspirations described earlier for school language policies can now be viewed in relation to the extent of their success in being a mechanism for dealing with disparity, diversity, literacy, and learning, particularly in Western contexts, the main focus of this chapter. Midway through the United Nations Decade of Literacy (2003–2012), it is pertinent to briefly examine links between language policies in specific countries and literacy actions at the school level. As May noted a decade ago, the prevalence of language policies at the school level in addressing these was not particularly widespread. As Ager (2001) has observed, the world has, in the last decade, experienced so
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