Special Issue: Language Ideologies and Teaching in Multilingual Contexts

This contribution explores the relationship between language ideologies and teaching with specific reference to the French national education context and in particular with respect to the education of children for whom French, the language of schooling, is not the language spoken in the home. The discourse of three teachers working in multilingual/cultural preschools is examined, revealing both beliefs about languages and practiced language policies underpinned by deep-rooted language ideologies which perpetuate a monolingual habitus. It is argued that in order to challenge the myths which support this monolingual mindset, it is essential to nurture teacher language awareness, underpinned by knowledge, values and a deeper understanding of the complexities of living and learning through multiple languages.


Editors' notes
This monograph brings together articles on the theme of language ideology and how it may be seen to impact on language teaching.Against the current backdrop of increasing nationalism and polarising debates on migration, this volume explores how ideologies underpinning language planning, policy and implementation influence curriculum design, classroom practice and perception of identity.Key to all articles is the dominance of English, a language imbued with notions of prestige, and seemingly promoted as a linguistic globalised currency, essential for accessing future opportunities.
Our invited author for this volume is the scholar Andrea Young, who examines the language ideologies which underpin teaching in a French educational context.It appears that despite the multilingual realities of contemporary French classrooms, the monolingual ideal still prevails.
Notions of monolingualism are also tackled in the second article, where Clare Courtney highlights the apparent lack of importance attached to ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) in the UK.She reflects on the inconsistency between dominant discourses (governmental and societal) and government funding, and the resulting effects on teacher attitude.Shifting from monolingual ideologies, Alicia Fernández Barrera documents the rapid increase in bilingual programmes in schools in central Spain, where the appropriation of English enables institutions to market themselves as elite and to take pride in local 'imagined ' bilingual communities (Anderson, 1991).The concept of imagined communities is also integral to Yuta Mogi's exploration of a nihonjingakko, a Japanese complementary school in Belgium: whilst the aim of the school is to teach Japanese language and culture to children living in the diaspora, there is an emphasis on the importance of learning English as an additional language, rather than the local French.This idea of the prioritisation of the global over the local, is reiterated in the final article, in which Joanna Duggan presents a study of language choice at schools in the Balearic Islands.Despite the coexistence of two official languages, Catalan and Spanish, there has been a move to increase the teaching of English as a foreign language.
Following this, John O'Regan talks to Alexantra Georgiou about language ideology and the global dominance of English.These topics are also explored in our featured book, Foreign Language Education in Japan: Exploring Qualitative Approaches, Sachiko Horoiguchi, Yuki Imoto, and Gregory S. Poole, reviewed by Takako Yoshida.
The papers in this Special Issue thus examine language ideology and its effect on teaching practices in various settings.The authors were approached as they all had experience of working in the field of language teaching.We hope the articles in this volume will contribute to the ongoing debate on the role of English in language education in an everchanging multilingual environment.
Sara Young and Emma Brooks May-June 2017

Reviewers for Volume 10.2
The editors would like to thank the following reviewers for their contribution to the preparation of Volume