This chapter examines the ways that language-in-education policies respond to the multilingualism of student populations and outlines some key issue that have contributed to children’s first languages being relatively marginalised in language policy and implementation. It considers contexts in which multilingual educational programmes have been normalised in policy. It then examines some of the ideological positions about education that conflict with the aims of multilingual education. It examines how different understandings of the nature and purpose of education shape the wider context in which language-in-education policies are developed and implemented to identify some key constraints that operate in such contexts.

When students make the transition from a secondary school environment (high school) to a tertiary (university) one, they are almost inevitably presented with a number of challenges. With the increasing use of English Medium Instruction (EMI), sometimes in both phases of education, the scale of those challenges is likely to increase. We first provide a theoretical account of those challenges and then exemplify them from the perspective of two different linguistic and geographical contexts: Italy and Hong Kong. We conclude that currently there is insufficient research on the transition between phases of education with regard to EMI.

This chapter introduces new plurilingual approaches to foreign language instruction in Japan, in the context of the generalisation of English as a lingua franca, and against the background of a push for Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL). Grounded in a brief historical exploration, we use three examples of plurilingual CLIL-like ‘islands’ in elementary schools to explore the whys and hows of weaving content and language within a plurilingual mindset. We argue that these small-scale frames open up affordances to develop multimodal literacies within an interdisciplinary framework in contexts where full immersion is not often feasible nor institutionalised.

The purpose of this chapter is to elaborate on the theory, policy, and practice of English medium education (EME) – teaching academic subjects in English – in the multilingual contexts of fourteen former republics of the Soviet Union. We show that there is more space for multilingual education in secondary education, and limited use of EME and minority languages in higher education, depending on the country. Across contexts, empirical research demonstrates both opportunities and challenges of EME for institutional policy, social mobility, cultural exchange, multilingual pedagogy, and linguistic development.

The global ascent of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) has sparked concerns about the potential erosion of local languages, in a process of “Englishisation” (Kirkpatrick, 2011). In the UAE, EMI is a cornerstone of higher education; furthermore, English has emerged as the preferred lingua franca in a nation where 85 per cent of the population hails from 100+ countries. This chapter delves into the resulting tension between English and Arabic (the local and regional language) within EMI contexts, scrutinising its impact on UAE higher education, sociolinguistic formations, and language policy. It explores future trajectories for EMI and Arabic, proposing strategies to integrate the two in institutional culture.

This chapter describes policies for the use of languages in education in South Africa, particularly the use of English. From a multilingual perspective, we discuss the language policy in South Africa and its effect on the education system in South Africa. A variety of translanguaging strategies is discussed, including technological support like the Mobilex mobile phone application. We also discuss the possibilities for multilingual education by considering the degree to which the funds-of-knowledge concept could be used to determine and encourage the use of African languages among off-campus students, specifically when students studied remotely (in response to the Covid-19 pandemic).

This chapter synthesises the findings and discusses how sociomaterial processes shape languages. Challenging modernist linguistic paradigms, it examines how language categories emerge through diverse cultural, historical, and material practices. The chapter critiques binary linguistic models and universalist, teleological assumptions of standardisation, showing that stable linguistic systems are not ‘natural’, but result from specific sociopolitical and material conditions. In contrast, fluid linguistic practices in postcolonial and globalised contexts exhibit variability, innovation, and complex indexicality. Belize’s multilingual environment exemplifies a setting without a hegemonic linguistic centre, producing liquid linguistic norms. The chapter argues for decolonial approaches to linguistics that embrace heterogeneity and that challenge exclusionary, Eurocentric models. Ultimately, it positions fluid linguistic practices as a cultural avant-garde and understands postcolonial environments as inspiring insights into future global sociolinguistic orders shaped by digitalisation and transnationalism.

Chapter 4 unpacks the complex ways in which claims to craft emerge in speechwriters’ metadiscursive accounts of their work. As theoretical background Mapes considers the ways in which more ordinary instances of language play are necessarily distinct from the “exceptional” creativity which defines speechwriters’ work (see Swann and Deumert 2018). Relatedly, she turns to poetics (e.g. Jakobson 1960) to examine how speechwriters exemplify a spectacular, institutionalized expression of the aesthetic or artistic dimensions of language. The subsequent analysis draws primarily on speechwriter memoirs and interviews to investigate the the microlinguistic choices which characterize speechwriters’ claims to artistry; their emphasis on persuasion as creative practice; and their proclivity for formulating themselves as distinctly neoliberal “bundles of skills” (e.g. Holborrow 2018). This chapter thereby demonstrates how poetics/creativity are used as key status-making strategies by which speechwriters shore up their privilege vis-à-vis peers and other language workers.

Faced with rapid social changes, language education is witnessing a turmoil of ideas and great proliferation of terms. Securing quality education for everybody is a key question of social justice, as is protecting linguistic and cultural diversity against the hegemony of dominant languages. This chapter highlights the need for openness to linguistic and cultural diversity in communities, classes, and individual repertoires. Building on the distinction between multilingual and plurilingual education, it discusses the way in which different terms leverage reflection on different visions of the role of languages in education and their potential to promote openness, awareness, and creativity.

This chapter contributes to the emerging literature on translanguaging as a resource for second language (L2) teaching and learning. Situated in Japanese higher education, it focuses on the translanguaging practices of Japanese L2 students or emergent bilinguals, who are ‘actively in the process of acquiring knowledge of a second language and developing bilingual languaging skills for use’ (B. Turnbull, 2018a: 1043), by addressing how they deploy translanguaging in L2 written practices as an indicator of the interplay of their complex linguistic repertoire.

This chapter outlines relevant aspects of theory and practice in the field of second language research for multilingual approaches to (language) education. We argue that what has been gleaned from the general field of second language acquisition research should not be ignored in any discussion of multilingualism or multilingual education. We contend that second language research – theoretical, empirical and applied – should continue to be part of the language education toolkit available to teachers, course designers, administrators and researchers; indeed, anyone involved in multilingual education.

Chapter 3 focuses on the notion of invisibility by tracking the life of a political speech from assignment to delivery. Mapes’ theoretical framework for this analysis comprises three interrelated concepts: language materiality (Shankar and Cavanaugh 2012), or the ways in which language and material objects are complicatedly entwined and consequently a matter of political economy; text trajectories (e.g. Lillis 2008), as in the processes that facilitate a text’s evolution; and entextualization (Bauman and Briggs 1990), the de- and recontextualization of language. Following Macgilchist and Van Hout’s (2011) ethnographic approach to documenting text trajectories, the analysis is divided into three case studies which together demonstrate speechwriters’ strategic and material erasure throughout the evolution of their deliverables. Ultimately, Mapes concludes by arguing that this ethnographic text trajectory evidence is another indication of the ways in which language workers must discursively enact Urciuoli’s (2008) “new worker-self” in order to claim status and success as wordsmiths.