Regarding teaching about religions and worldviews, there is a gap between the ambitions of educational policies and our knowledge about what really happens in the classroom. Research on classroom interaction about religion is not very far developed, either nationally or as international and as comparative research. There is a growing awareness, however, that research on pupils’ perspectives on religion in education is needed in order to develop sustainable approaches for future education, and this book is a contribution to this research. The classroom can be seen as an arena both for learning and for micro-politics. This arena is shaped, and sometimes challenged and restricted, or even curtailed, by the wider societal and political context. In this book we present studies of classroom interaction that focus on the micro-sociological level of research. The studies presented open up a rather unexplored field of international comparative research on religion in education and the role of diversity for classroom interaction, giving deeper insights into what happens in classrooms, displaying varieties of interactive patterns and relating these to their specific contexts.

Pioneering in the comparison of standard language teaching in Europe, the International Mother tongue Education Network (IMEN) in the last twenty-five years stimulated experts from more than fifteen European countries to participate in a range of research projects in this field of qualitative educational analyses. The volume “Research on mother tongue education in a comparative international perspective – Theoretical and methodological issues” documents theoretical principals and methodological developments that during the last decades shaped IMEN research and may enlarge the fundaments of comparative qualitative research in language education in a seminal way. The topics of this volume include: • IMEN’s aims, points of departure, history and methodology; • research on the professional practical knowledge of MTE-teachers; • innovation, key incident analysis and international triangulation; • positioning in theory and practice. Also included: the IMEN bibliography 1984-2004 which supplies a complete picture of IMEN research activities from the beginning.

This edited book makes a significant contribution to the relatively under-explored field of multilingualism and politics, approaching the topic from two key perspectives: multilingualism in politics, and the politics of multilingualism. Through the lens of case studies from around the world, the authors in this volume combine theoretical and empirical insights to examine the inter-relation between multilingualism and politics in different spheres and contexts, including minority language policy, national identity, the translation of political debates and discourse, and the use of multiple, often competing languages in educational settings. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of politics, sociology, sociolinguistics, language policy, and translation and interpreting studies.

This is a book about language and education in one of the smallest European Union member-states, Luxembourg. It presents the results of an ethnographic study of code-switching and language ideologies among transnational, luso-descendant youngsters attending a number of youth centres in Luxembourg city. It offers a comprehensive description of the processes of construction and negotiation of new, emergent identities and ethnicities. The author considers the implications of these results for language-in-education policy, including the EU policy of multilingualism. He criticizes mother-tongue education and advocates instead the use of «literacy bridges». Clearly argued and widely applicable, this book is essential reading for students and researchers interested in multilingualism, migration and education.

The issues raised by the role of language in education are some of the most important and contentious faced by education systems across the globe. Language is embedded in the concepts of nationhood and identity, and is therefore directly linked to the very social and political fabric of a country. In a climate of increasing globalisation, development and mobility of populations, nations around the world are concerned with the tension between cultivating a sense of cultural and linguistic cohesion and making use of the linguistic diversity that exists in every country and region. This book examines the implications and impacts, the dilemmas and potential for language education in relation to education systems and wider society. Split into three key parts, it considers: *current issues in language education, including the role of language in maintaining power and inequalities, in encouraging participation and inclusion and in challenging the status quo; *different approaches to language education around the world; *the potential for language to provide opportunities for the disadvantaged, illustrated by case studies of three cities. This recent volume of the internationally respected World Yearbook of Education continues the tradition of offering a wide range of international perspectives from leading commentators on a universal concern. The material amassed here will be essential reading for teacher educators, education researchers and school leaders across the world.

The contributors to Language Ideologies, Policies and Practices investigate the workings of language ideologies in relation to other social processes in a globalizing world. They explore in detail the specific ways in which language ideologies underpin language policy and the relationship between public policies and individual practices. Particular attention is given to Europe, where the impetus to social transformation within and across national boundaries is in renewed tension with conflicting national and supra-national interests, with these tensions reflected in the complex issues of language choice and language policy.

This comprehensive, state-of-the-art reference work provides the first systematic review to date of how sociologists have studied the relationship between race/ethnicity and educational inequality over the last thirty years in eighteen different national contexts.