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Multilingualism in Canada: Policy and Education in Applied Linguistics Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2013

Diane Dagenais
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Abstract

Increasing multilingualism in Canada has captured the interest of applied linguists who investigate what it implies for policy and educational practice. This article provides a review of recent discussions of Canadian policy in the literature, current research on multilingual learners, and emerging innovations in multilingual pedagogies. The literature on policy indicates that some researchers treat policy as text and identify disjunctions between policy documents and the reality of a linguistically and culturally diverse population, while others view it as discursive practice and document how policy is constructed locally through language in response to a changing environment. The research on multilingual learners is based primarily on field-based reports that reveal how multilingual language practices are complex, dynamic, and ideological, and are tied to identity construction. The growing number of innovations in multilingual pedagogies suggests that more educators are beginning to see identity work and multimodal literacies as central to teaching students of diverse origins. This article concludes that there is a gap between official language policy and research on multilingualism in Canada.

Type
SECTION C: LANGUAGE POLICY AND EDUCATION IN MULTILINGUAL REGIONS
Information
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics , Volume 33 , March 2013 , pp. 286 - 301
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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References

ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burnaby, B. (2008). Language policy and education in Canada. In May, S. & Hornberger, N. H. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education: Vol. 1. Language policy and political issues in education (2nd ed., pp. 331–341). New York, NY: Springer.

Though short, this review provides a detailed historical description of the relationship between language policy and education that highlights some of the problems in the current policy framework.

Cummins, J., & Early, M. (Eds.). (2011). Identity texts: The collaborative creation of power in multilingual schools. Stoke on Trent, UK: Trentham Books.

This book presents short reports from numerous case studies in different regions associated with the Multiliteracies Project that focus on the creation of multimodal, multilingual identity texts in classrooms.

Da Silva, E., & Heller, M. (2009). From protector to producer: The role of the state in the discursive shift from minority rights to economic development. Language Policy, 8, 95–116.

Based on a detailed account of negotiations between the federal government and leaders in the minority Francophone community, this article provides a nuanced discussion of policy as ideological discursive process grounded in political economy.

Multilingualism in Canadian schools [Special issue]. (2007). Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 10 (2).

The articles in this special issue are based on contributions to an invited colloquium on multilingualism in Canadian schools held at the joint conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics and the Canadian Association of Applied Linguistics held in Montreal in June 2006.

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