Justifying Educational Language Rights

Beyond economy and culture: language-in-education preferences of Malaysian youth

“…Secondly, and perhaps more poignantly, these comments reveal that the students preferred English not for reasons overtly associated with globalization or international mobility, but for cognitive ease and policy consistency. Their arguments were notably void, in these examples, of any ideological persuasion to favour English for the socioeconomic or international mobility motivations that often structure discussions in language policy and linguistic anthropological literature (Duchêne & Heller, 2012;May, 2014). Rather than arguing that mathematics and science should be taught in English because this facilitates participation in global economic or scientific markets, they in fact preferred the perceived ease of monolingualism when transitioning between education levels.…”

“…The ideological tension for non first-language speakers of Englishwhen it comes to second or foreign language acquisition or to choosing a medium-of-instruction in educationis, as May (2014) would put it, one between the Local and the Global. Or as Duchêne and Heller (2012) would call it, it is one between pride and profit.…”

Turbulence and dilemma: implications of diversity and multilingualism in Australian education

“…It is then argued that Australia's commitments to international frameworks on human rights and education require a (re-) engagement with debates and research on linguistic diversity in countries of the global south and north (cf. May, 2014aMay, , 2014bSkutnabb-Kangas, 2010). These commitments have implications for the long-term socio-economic and political health of Indigenous, migrant minority and majority communities in Australia (Heugh, 2013).…”

“…Yet, Australian policy-makers and administrative officials do have commitments to meet the obligations and targets of international frameworks on human rights and education. There is a responsibility to engage with the obligations of office and there are opportunities to look towards other contexts where these matters are given serious attention (May, 2014b;Ouane & Glanz, 2010;Skutnabb-Kangas, 2010). A reconnection with the developments that move towards addressing the challenges of contemporary multilingualism may prove useful.…”

"There's too much to explain": On being a bilingual pre-service teacher in a monolingual teacher education institution

“…This article is founded in a study which grew out of concern for the perceived impact on bilingual and multilingual students of the apparent disjunction between Australia's diverse communication ecology and its prevailing aggressive [ly] monolingual (Clyne, 2005) educational practices, particularly with regard to the preparation of mainstream pre-service primary teachers. The study sought specifically to discover and probe the perspectives and experiences of bilingual and multilingual pre-service primary teachers in one Australian university in regard to their linguistic ability and their studies occurring within an increasingly prevalent 'cosmopolitan' (May, 2014) orientation to languages worldwide. Cosmopolitanism advocates "languages of wider communication, and particularly English as the current world language, as the means of global interchange and the basis of social mobility" (May, 2014, p. 216).…”