This paper revisits the main thoughts of the Filipino historian and social critic Renato Constantino on the role of education in the formation of a neocolonial and postcolonial consciousness. It suggests that Constantino's critical stance towards education embodies a type of philosophizing about education that centers on the problematization of…

The aim of this Afterword is to foreground and discuss some of the key themes emerging from the four studies in this special issue. I first consider the critical ethnographic approach to language policy and planning adopted in the studies, and the attention to language policy processes unfolding on different scales of social and institutional…

This case study is based on research conducted within the plurilingual context of Vanuatu, formerly a condominium colony of Britain and France. A surfeit of heritage languages exists within this context, alongside the European languages of English and French and the national language of Bislama, an English-lexifier pidgin. With the existence of…

This study examined how Papiamento and Dutch attitude and home literacy environment of 168 children in fourth grade of the post-colonial Dutch Caribbean, predicted L1 and L2 reading literacy in sixth grade. Overall, children had higher scores for reading literacy in L1 Papiamento as compared with L2 Dutch. They showed more positive attitudes…

Using data from multilingual settings in universities and adjacent learning contexts in East Asia, North Africa, Central and North America and Europe, this book provides examples of the heuristic value of translanguaging and epistemological decentring. Despite this and other theoretical and empirical work, and ever stronger calls for the inclusion…

In this paper, we build on southern and decolonial theories of multilingualism and invite a south-north conversation through a concept we propose as "reciprocal multilingual awareness." Reciprocity is a core value of southern societies that balance pluralities of episteme, language, and communality. Central features of southern…

This article presents a new perspective on how to think about interculturality and education from the perspective of a native society in the Paraguayan Chaco. It highlights how formal schooling reaffirms the model of unidirectional relations advocated by national society. Within this model, indigenous peoples and persons are not allowed to…

This dissertation focuses on the consequences of exclusionary ethnic nationalisms by examining historical and contemporary language practices regarding educational systems in Burma. Despite its long presence, Burmanisation has recently gained heightened attention as it is central to the political discourses that emerged in response to the military…

This paper reports on an inquiry that explored how a group of Nepali secondary school students discursively reconstructed and interpreted their English learning in Hong Kong. In the study we collected data from 30 participants through participatory observation, in-depth unstructured interview and taking field notes in two secondary schools. The…

This paper discusses how the political interplay between English-in-society and English-in-education policy in the Global South(s) facilitates what I term 'English as a subtle technology of policy distraction' in postcolonial spheres that were colonised by languages other than English. 'English as a subtle technology of policy distraction' is…

This article engages with the theme of the proposed special issue in a perhaps unexpected way: for me, the 'translinguistic movement' is a pertinent reminder to move beyond the boundaries of language and other visible/audible modalities that are involved in semiosis. It also encourages us to move beyond the naïve empiricism that has shaped…

This study problematises the discourses of Pakistan's national curriculum textbooks to investigate how they represent Pakistan's indigenous languages/cultures through the prism of religion to constitute secondary school students' particular postcolonial linguistic identities. It also draws on the perspectives of 12 teachers and 424 students to…

The historical discrimination of Indigenous groups within Mexican society remains relevant to the experiences of Mexican Indigenous youth in the U.S. Similar to their immigrant peers, Mexican Indigenous students face cultural discontinuities between home and school that affect their negotiation of identity. Still, Mexican Indigenous students also…

The postcolonial states of the English-speaking Caribbean inherited unequal political, social, and economic institutions from British rule. Although the region's forefathers made decided strides towards rebuilding new nations, independence and equality still elude modern Caribbean societies. The systemic challenges that the region faces, situated…

The proficiency in vernacular has long been a methodological ethos pervasive among field researchers and--despite new dynamics of fieldwork--still overshadows discussions related to collaboration with translators and interpreters, which are either marginalized or hidden within the category of a 'research assistant'. The purpose of this study is to…