Global Language Policies and Local Educational Practices and Cultures

The chapters in this publication are contributions from scholars in many parts of the world and offer great insights into how global phenomena are related to local practices in many different contexts. Even more significantly, many of them have been produced collaboratively by authors from different countries, demonstrating not only the pragmatic possibilties of globalisation but also the hope that the opportunity of learning from people from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds will be increasingly available to everyone. That the local community is also increasingly a global community offers hope that such deep learning will enrich more and more people's lives and that the problematisation of diversity will be turned into its enjoyment as a valuable resource for all. The book is divided into three parts. The first explores a broad range of issues that bring together policy, culture and practice. Here we see examples of the ways in which language education policy is trying to fulfil the needs of young people to learn languages that will support access to global relationships (Milic) or to maintain their heritage languages and the cultures that are embodied within them, either in the regions where they once flourished (Yu) or in places that they have migrated to (Abdelhadi and van Rensburg). The implications for teachers of working in diverse contexts are vast and some of these are explored in Tait's chapter on the need for teacher awareness of ways of supporting learners both from a different cultural background along with special educational needs. The demands on the researcher to conceptualise key elements of the experience of globalisation are also addressed in the ways in which identity, language and culture relate to education (Budd, Geng and Te Ava). Parts 2 and 3 of the book focus on English, first as a Foreign Language and then as an Additional Language. The ways in which new technologies can enable very young childrem to learn English are described firstly by Winskel, Zhou, Li, Mei, Peart and Booth, and then by Han and van Rensburg. As with the whole book, the chapters travel the world, with Part 2 including insights into issues related to phonology and Chinese dyslexic screening tests (Di), while closing with explorations of schools in Nepal (Duwadi) and Inner Mongolia (Guo, Diaz and Liyanage). In Part 3, Guo, Liyanage, Bartlett, Walker and Diaz address some of the challenges facing teachers of English as an Additional Language, when learners are surrounded by English practices for much of their lives. The significance of language issues for all ages is highlighted in the following chapters, which move beyond school age learners to university students. Here international students face their own challenges in relation to, for example, the development of English for academic writing (Kawano) or exposure to unfamiliar pedagogic approaches (Park and Son). These chapters share practices in addressing these challenges, as does the final one by Dashwood, Dickson and Harmsworth. It can be seen from this sketchy portrait of globalisation that the themes of this book lie at its very heart. Global shifts have an enormous impact on local practices and cultures, and they bring with them significant implications for the development of language practices and policies. Furthermore, in order to stay afloat when confronted by ongoing, rapid and complex changes, not only in available knowledge, but also in communities, cultures, circumstances, needs, challenges and opportunities, new approaches to education, including curricula and pedagogies, need to be imagined and developed. In this book, such educational, pedagogical and policy imperatives are framed within the context of a 'deep'' approach and explored specifically through its implications for language education."