Bilingualism as Ideology and Practice

Two languages in the air: a cross-cultural comparison of preschool teachers’ reflections on their flexible bilingual practices

“…As Heller (2007) has pointed out, language practices are inseparable from beliefs about languages and attitudes towards them in the surrounding society. For this reason we also considered it important to examine how the teachers' reflections were embedded in the specific educational and socio-political context in which they expressed them, and which possibly had an impact on their language practices.…”

“…However, little research attention has been paid to providing bilingual teachers with any deeper understanding of their own agency and their critical role in negotiating, constructing and reconstructing classroom language practices. This is especially true for the context of preschool education and young children's essential developmental and social needs.As Heller (2007) has pointed out, language practices are inseparable from beliefs about languages and attitudes towards them in the surrounding society. For this reason we also considered it important to examine how the teachers' reflections were embedded in the specific educational and socio-political context in which they expressed them, and which possibly had an impact on their language practices.…”

Language policy and orthographic harmonization across linguistic, ethnic and national boundaries in Southern Africa

“…However, where appropriate, illustrations are also drawn from other countries in Southern Africa. The paper's conceptualisation is informed by recent poststructuralist thinking in which speakers' spaces of interaction and use of linguistic resources are not bounded by rigid boundaries or inflexible hegemonic systems (Pennycook 2010;Heller 2007). In this conceptualisation, the notion of multilingualism and the relationship between language and identity is different from the traditional one built around the idea of linguistic distinctness (Heller 2007), and in which the world is seen as "a neat patchwork of separate [ethnic], monolingual, geographical areas almost exclusively populated by monolingual speakers" (De Schutter 2007, p. 3).…”

“…as well as spaces (classrooms, homes, church/mosque, playgrounds, etc. ) in different ways (Heller 2007;Stroud 2007;Banda 2009). …”

Linguistic Diversity as a Problem and a Resource – Multilingualism in European and Finnish Policy Documents

“…Blommaert, 1999;Makoni & Pennycook, 2007;Heller, 2007). Especially the European documents explicitly celebrate late modern, hybrid forms of multilingualism, but a high modern view of 'monolingual multilingualism' emerges implicitly, painting a different kind of picture in the supranational and especially in the national level documents.…”