EDUCATION AND SOCIETY IN PLURILINGU

Multilingual education provision is diverse and complex, depending on social, political, educational and linguistic goals that are not always clearly perceived. This volume addresses some of the options taken in Asia, Europe and North America, by focussing on both macro- and micro-logical issues in urban environments.
Contextual frameworks for policy, pedagogic and performance profiles covering Brunei, Brussels, Canada, China (including Hong Kong and Taiwan), Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom illustrate a variety of recent insights and initiatives which give anew impetus to research on multilingualism. The range of topics covered is broad. They include methodological questions on how to analyse complex, shifting multilingual entities, comparisons between cities with similar backgrounds but different policies, the evolution of language education and policy challenges over time, the difficulties facing implementers of bilingual education and the outcome obtained on linguistic proficiency and non-language subjects. The number of languages studied is also large. This not only widens the focus of issues and findings, but also provides insights that are not necessarily language or context specific but address multilingualism in rapidly evolving urban settings.
The overall theme that threads through the 15 papers of this volume reveals how contemporary educational policy, when suitably anchored in a broader social context, can move beyond the assumed monolingual frame of reference underlying the majority of debates on language and society.