Educators are at the epicenter of language policy in education. This book explores how they interpret, negotiate, resist, and (re)create language policies in classrooms. Bridging the divide between policy and practice by analyzing their interconnectedness, it examines the negotiation of language education policies in schools around the world, focusing on educators’ central role in this complex and dynamic process. Each chapter shares findings from research conducted in specific school districts, schools, or classrooms around the world and then details how educators negotiate policy in these local contexts. Discussion questions are included in each chapter. A highlighted section provides practical suggestions and guiding principles for teachers who are negotiating language policies in their own schools.

In an effort to reverse the purported crisis in U.S. public schools, the federal government, states, and districts have mandated policies that favor standardized approaches to teaching and assessment. As a consequence, teachers have been relying on teacher-centered instructional approaches that do not take into consideration the needs, experiences, and interests of their students; this is particularly pronounced with English learners (ELs). The widespread implementation of these policies is particularly striking in California, where more than 25% of all public school students are ELs. This volume reports on three studies that explore how teachers of ELs in three school districts negotiated these policies. Drawing on sociocultural and poststructural perspectives on agency and power, the authors examine how contexts in which teachers of ELs lived and worked influenced the messages they constructed about these policies and mediated their decisions about policy implementation. The volume provides important insights into processes affecting the learning and teaching of ELs.

This book explores how high-stakes tests mandated by No Child Left Behind have become de facto language policy in U.S. schools, detailing how testing has shaped curriculum and instruction, and the myriad ways that tests are now a defining force in the daily lives of English Language Learners and the educators who serve them.

This new edition of takes a fresh look at enduring questions at the heart of fundamental debates about the role of schools in society, the links between education and employment, and conflicts between linguistic minorities and "mainstream" populations.

The role of English in the global arena has prompted official language-in-education policy makers to adopt language education policies to enable its citizens to be proficient in English and to access knowledge. Local educational contexts in different countries have implemented English education in their own ways with different pedagogical goals, motivations, features and pedagogies. While much of the research cited in English language planning policy has focused on macro level language policy and planning, there is an increasing interest in micro planning, in particular teacher agency in policy response. Individual teacher agency is a multifaceted amalgam, not only of teachers’ individual histories, professional training, personal values and instructional beliefs, but also of how these interact with local interpretations and appropriations of policy. Teacher Agency and Policy Response in English Language Teaching examines the agency of the teacher in negotiating educational reforms and policy changes at the local and national levels. Chapters in the book include: English language teaching in China: teacher agency in response to curricular innovations Incorporating academic skills into EFL curriculum: teacher agency in response to global mobility challenge Teacher agency, the native/nonnative dichotomy, and "English Classes in English" in Japanese high Schools Teacher-designed high stakes English language testing: washback and impact This book will appeal to researcher across all sectors of education, in particular key stakeholders in curriculum and language planning. Those interested in the latest development of English language teaching will also find this book a valuable resource.

Dual language education is a program that combines language minority and language majority students for instruction through two languages. This book provides the conceptual background for the program and discusses major implementation issues. Research findings summarize language proficiency and achievement outcomes from 8000 students at 20 schools, along with teacher and parent attitudes.

A critical look at language policies, how they are implemented and the hidden agendas which often lie behind them, drawing on examples from the US and UK and showing what the consequences are for the people involved.

This multi-year autoethnographically oriented practitioner inquiry was concerned with Pasifika English Language Learner (ELL) students, teachers, and staff in a multilingual, multicultural secondary school in New Zealand. Drawing from my practice as a teacher and teacher-leader, I explored the range of learning and teaching opportunities that could be created by and made available for ELL students within the context of existing school-based practices and policies. In linguistically and culturally pluralistic national contexts framed by educational policies and practices conceptualized to value one (or two) languages and cultures over others, policies often insufficiently account for the full diversity of identities, knowledges, and ideologies present in the wider population. As national borders become more permeable, there is a greater need in predominantly English speaking countries to understand the relationships, practices, and policies enacted by and for ELL students. This study was conducted from my location as an experienced teacher and teacher-leader practicing in an unfamiliar cross-cultural context. The conceptual framings recognize languages and literacies as socially constructed, socially situated, and inherently ideologic, and the enactment of school-based practice and policy as inevitably local and relational. The methodology was connected to my braided personal, political, scholarly, and professional commitments to inquiry-based practice and cultural, linguistic, and ideological diversity. Collected and analyzed during my time at the school and in retrospect, data included artifacts of practice, an inquiry journal, formal and informal interviews, and analytic memos. By putting forth conceptions of ELL students and school-based staff as generators of knowledge and situating local knowledge of practice within wider contexts, this study illuminates the importance of locating difference within discourses of possibility. Using my practice over 2 years as a case, I found that Pasifika ELL students and the school-based staff supporting them, actively resisted their positionings as silent majorities by envisioning, creating, and taking up opportunities to enact more equitable school-based pedagogy and curriculum. Using a series of vignettes of practice as data sources, I argue for the generative participation of multiple languages, literacies, and ideologies in linguistically and culturally pluralistic schools.

The book describes the rationale for classroom negotiation and is accessible to practitioners.

This volume considers a range of ways in which bilingual programs can make a contribution to aspects of human and economic development in the global South. The authors examine the consequences of different policies, programs, and pedagogies for learners and local communities through recent ethnographic research on these topics. The revitalization of minority languages and local cultural practices, management of linguistic and cultural diversity, and promotion of equal opportunities (both social and economic) are all explored in this light.