en English is Íslenska

Thesis

National and University Library of Iceland > Doktorsritgerðir Íslendinga varðar við erlenda háskóla >

Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/1946/20406

Title: 
  • From policy to practice. A study of the implementation of the Language-in-Education Policy (LiEP) in three South African Primary Schools
Abstract: 
  • There is a general consensus among educators and researchers looking into the state of
    education in Africa that the primary language of the students is the language through which
    education should take place. As each formerly colonised territory in Africa has achieved
    independence, policies for the newly independent states have been formulated. The last four
    decades have shown us that very often the articulation of policy, particularly language policy,
    has more to do with a sense of political expediency than reasons of economic or educational
    development (Alexander, 1989, 1992). Multilingual language policies which recognize
    linguistic pluralism as resources for nation-building are increasingly becoming commonplace.
    Many of these policies envision implementation through bilingual education, which open up
    new possibilities for oppressed language groups (both indigenous and immigrant languages
    groups) and their speakers. However, Akinnaso (1993) points out that there is often a
    mismatch between policy and the plan for implementation, particularly with regard to
    language policy in education. Thus the implementation plan has little potential for achieving
    the goals of the policy. The situation in South Africa is one in which multilingualism is both
    supported and contested, despite the progressive commitment to equality of language rights in the country’s constitution (Alexander, 1992).
    The new Constitution of 1993 in post-apartheid South Africa embraces language as a basic
    human right and multilingualism as a national resource, introducing nine major African
    languages (Ndebele, Xhosa, Zulu, Sepedi, Sotho, Tswana, Swati, Venda, and Tsonga) as
    official languages alongside English and Afrikaans, along with the dismantling of the
    apartheid educational system. To transform the previous apartheid education system into a
    diversifying one, where the “rainbow” of identities and languages are accepted, and to
    construct a national identity that is multilingual and multicultural constitute ideological
    paradoxes which are a challenge to implement (Hornberger, 1991). For Hornberger (1991)
    multilingual language policies are essentially about opening up ideological and
    implementational space in the environment for as many languages as possible, and in
    particular, endangered languages if they are to evolve and flourish rather than dwindle and
    disappear. In this investigation I analyze the effectiveness of the South African multilingual
    language policy in promoting additive and functional multilingualism and in opening up the ideological and implementational space needed for the survival of the previously oppressed
    African languages.

Description: 
  • Description is in Icelandic Avhandling til dr.polit.graden, Universitetet i Oslo, Det utdanningsvitenskapelige fakultet, Pedagogisk forskningsinstitutt
Accepted: 
  • Jan 21, 2015
URI: 
  • http://hdl.handle.net/1946/20406


Files in This Item:
Filename Size VisibilityDescriptionFormat 
Holmarsdottir_avhandling.pdf2,61 MBOpenHeildartextiPDFView/Open