Multilingual Education and India

Symposium: Language and language differences tend to get taken for granted by planners The Study Group on Language and the United Nations, an independent group of scholars and practitioners on matters related to language, convened a symposium on Language and the Sustainable Development Goals in New York, on 21 and 22 April 2016.  Its goal was to examine the importance of issues of language in the formulation, implementation, and successful completion of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

LLF is looking for an Expert in Multilingual Education In the many year this list is running, never a job offer was posted. But since the need that Dhir Jingran expressed below is so close to the heart of what this blog and mailing list is about, let us help Dhir to find a good person. The Delhi based Language and Learning Foundation has a special focus on early language and literacy development for children with a different home language background. The three critical domains they are active in are: Professional development of all the stakeholders involved with children' education, ranging from teachers to educational administrators. This would encompass rolling out general as well as customized workshops, courses on Early Literacy and Language, specialized courses on Multi Lingual Education, Assessments, Early Grade Reading Materials, Balanced Literacy, Developing Writing skills amongst children, Comprehension and so on. Knowledge building and dissemination. T...

Research paper: Language and language-in-education planning in multilingual India It is fun to note when a good friend publishes on multilingual education in India. Dr Cynthia Groff has visited India many times and did her PhD research on the language and education situation among the Kumauni people in Uttarakhand.   The full tittle of the paper is "Language and language-in-education planning in multilingual India: A linguistic minority perspective." and is based on Nancy Hornberger's language policy and planning seminar. The abstract states: "This article explores India's linguistic diversity from a language policy perspective, emphasizing policies relevant to linguistic minorities". Here are the details: Groff, C.  (2016). Language and language-in-education planning in multilingual India: A linguistic minority perspective.  Language Policy,  in press .  Available through 'online first', open access: http://link.springer.com/arti...

5th International Conference on Language and Education   The International Conferences on Language and Education, which have been organized by a large group of agencies in Asia, have over the years impacted many projects in India. The 5th one will be held this year, again in Bangkok. The following announcement has been copied from the UNESCO MLE Newsletter   Asia Pacific Multilingual Education Working Group (MLE WG) will be organizing its 5th International Conference on Language and Education on 19-21 October 2016 in Bangkok , Thailand. The 5th International Conference on Language and Education will take stock of recent developments in MLE policies and practices in the Asia-Pacific region, with a special focus on multilingual education in early childhood and primary education.        It will likewise look at innovative pedagogies in the training of MLE teachers. Finally, it will examine challenges and lesson learned from the EFA experience a...

Policy Brief - Reading Solutions for girls in a multilingual setting   The 2015 Echidna Global Scholars Policy Brief has this year been titled Reading solutions for girls; Combating social, pedagogical, and systemic issues for tribal girls' multilingual education in India.   The 28 page Policy Brief has been written by Suman Sachdeva, Technical Director Education, CARE India. Here are a few highlights taken from a summary on the brooking website : The current approach to delivering effective multilingual education (MLE) for tribal students where tribal populations are more than 30 percent of the local population and where there are more than three dialects is inadequate overall and ignores gender-specific educational challenges. Although evidence suggests there is a small gender gap in reading ability between tribal girls and boys, in general girls are more heavily impacted by inadequate language skills in the short and long term as they become more vuln...

Textbooks in Jharkhand Earlier this week the governor of Jharkhand pleaded that Santhali children should be educated in their mother tongue. It looks like this is indeed going to happen and not only for Santhali, but also Mundari, Ho, Kudukh and Kharia children . The Telegraph reports this week: Ethnic kids of Classes I & II to open new page next year . Binay Pattanayak and his team at the Unicef Jharkhand office has been working closely with the Jharkhand Council for Education, Research and Training (JCERT) to prepare textbooks for langauge and maths for class 1 and 2 in five tribal langauges. The plan is that they will be introduced from the next academic session onwards.

Delhi Conference on Multilingualism and Development Last week the British Council India hosted the 11th Language and Development Conference on Multilingualism and Development in Delhi. The Statemam  published this week an article with highlights of the conference Of course there was quite some attention given to the role that English plays in the sociolinguistic arena india. Prof Ajit Mohanty spoke in that regard about  "a double divide: one between the elitist language of power and the major regional languages (vernaculars) and, the other, between the regional languages and the dominated indigenous languages." While talking about the promises the parents are given while enrolling their children in private English medium schools, Giridhar Rao of Azim Premji University, "argued that it is a false promise for two reasons. The first is the poor condition of the education system in the country. ... private schools do not give better academic results compared to go...