M. Obaidul Hamid

English in primary education in Malaysia: policies, outcomes and stakeholders’ lived experiences

This paper examines English language-in-education policy and planning (LEPP) in Malaysia from macro- and micro-language planning perspectives over the past 50 years. Specifically, it focuses on English language policies at the primary level and investigates their outcomes and consequences at different levels of education. The major focus of this paper is a case study that was conducted on samples of students, lecturers and administrators in a public university providing an illustration of how macro-level policies are enacted at the micro-level. The analysis of the participants’ views and perceptions suggests that macro-level planning alone may not produce the desired changes in language behaviour and that national-level planning needs to be complemented by micro-level work to create desirable language policy outcomes. This suggests that Malaysian LEPP needs to take micro-level realities, perceptions and stakeholders’ experiences into consideration while promoting and strengthening the mastery of English if macro-level planning is to contribute to successful outcomes.

Ethical issues in cross-cultural research

The gap between theoretical expectations of research ethics as outlined in the bureaucratic processes associated with University Ethics Committees and the situated realities of students undertaking studies within their own sociocultural contexts is explored in this paper. In particular, the authors investigate differences in ethical norms and practices by providing ‘subaltern’ voices from the field, as three of the authors narrate their experiences during their doctoral field work that led them to challenge the validity of ethics review processes in institutions at the Centre when undertaking research at the periphery. The field work experiences produced unavoidable tensions as the students attempted to construct the hybridity required when working within transnational contexts of higher education. The paper concludes with some advice to students and advisors and members of Ethics Review Committees to encourage the destabilization of essentialist assumptions often made in Eurocentric research designs.

Communicative English in the Primary Classroom: Implications for English-in-Education Policy and Practice in Bangladesh.

Globalisation and the global spread of English have led nation-states to introduce English into the early years of schooling to equip their citizens with communicative competence in order to compete within a global economy for individual and national development. In teaching English as a Second/Foreign Language, nations have adopted learner-centred approaches such as communicative language teaching to conform to neoliberal discourses of global capitalism and liberal democracy on the one hand and policy directions and imperatives of world policy organisations and funding agencies on the other. In this paper, the implications of these global imperatives within the local context of Bangladeshi primary English classrooms are investigated and a comprehensive picture of the pedagogy in practice in terms of classroom discourses and interactions, learning activities and teacher and learner behaviours is drawn. This picture is supplemented by qualitative insights into primary L1 (first language) literacy pedagogy to demonstrate how materials and methods policies are acted out in the classroom context. It is argued that communicative English and learner-centred pedagogy cannot be seen, to a desirable extent, in actual classroom practice, thus impeding L2 teaching goals in the country.

Fieldwork for language education research in rural Bangladesh: Ethical issues and dilemmas

This contribution documents the author’s lived experiences in his fieldwork for his PhD research in the field of English as a second/foreign language in a familiar social setting in Bangladesh. The account suggests that insider researchers can helpfully draw on their tacit knowledge of local social and cultural norms and values to understand their research participants and their experiences, and behave with them in socially and culturally appropriate ways. However, it also shows that the insider perspective is more complex and problematic than is commonly assumed. To what extent local researchers are true insiders is questionable, particularly if they have social status differences with their research participants and, more crucially, if they are trained in Western academia and Western ethical norms. The major focus here is on the relevance of the ethical codes emphasized by the ethics committee of an Australian university to fieldwork in rural Bangladesh. The discussion that follows highlights personal ethical dilemmas, which resulted from an irreconcilable gap between the expectations of research ethics in Western academia and cultural realities and behavioural norms in the developing society. Implications of these ethical issues for fieldwork in developing countries as well as for institutional review boards are suggested.

Language, Identity, and Social Divides: Medium of Instruction Debates in Bangladeshi Print Media

This article critically examines the role of language as medium of instruction (MOI) in shaping students’ self-perceptions, worldviews, and identities in a globalizing world. We draw on identity and social positioning theories and on Bourdieu’s concepts of capital and symbolic struggle to frame our investigation. Using an analytical framework comprising critical discourse analysis and qualitative content analysis, we analyze letters written by Bangla- and English-medium writers to the editor of a Bangladeshi English newspaper to illustrate how discursive identity construction for “self” and “other” engaged the two groups in identity battles. We argue that (a) discursive identity politics may not be characterized in essentialist or nonessentialist terms exclusively but may actually draw on both depending on whether the representation is of self or other; and (b) although MOI is inextricably linked to social divides, the roots of the divides may lie in the social rather than in the discursive space.

Educational policy borrowing in a globalized world: A case study of Common European Framework of Reference for languages in a Vietnamese University

Purpose – This paper aims to shed light on the process of adopting and accommodating a global language education framework, namely the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) for languages, in the context of Vietnam. Design/methodology/approach – The data to develop the argument of the paper are obtained from a doctoral research project that aims to understand the reception, interpretations and responses of key stakeholders in the process of enacting the CEFR in a Vietnam public university. The study was designed as a qualitative case study with data being collected using policy document analysis, classroom observation and in-depth interviews with 21 purposively sampled participants, including school administrators, English language teachers and students over a period of six months. Findings – The paper argues that the adoption of the CEFR, as it currently stands, can be seen at best as a “quick-fix” (Steiner-Khamsi, 2004, p. 58) solution to the complex and time-consuming problem of improving the qu...

Beginning EFL teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their questioning practices

Motivated by the scarcity of research that examines the impact of teacher beliefs on their actual practices in Vietnam, this study investigated the relationship between teachers’ beliefs about quality questions and their questioning behaviours in terms of questioning purposes, content focus, students’ cognitive level, wording and syntax. Thirteen beginning EFL (English as a foreign language) teachers working at Vietnam National University participated in the study. Qualitative data collected by means of an open-ended questionnaire survey and classroom observation were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Findings show that although there was a general congruence between teachers’ beliefs and practices, there were discrepancies – from moderate to substantial – between what the teachers believed and what they actually did in the class with respect to the four specified features. While much more research is required to understand the links between EFL teachers’ beliefs and practices about quality questions in Vietnam and other EFL contexts, it is expected that the insights will contribute to the literature on teacher questions, beliefs and practices.

English-in-Education Policy and Planning in Bangladesh: A Critical Examination

This chapter draws on critical perspectives on language policy and planning and language-in-education policy implementation framework to provide an overview of the history of English language education policies, policy implementation and their outcomes in Bangladesh. It traces the factors that have influenced the policies, their implementation and their rather dismal outcomes. The chapter describes the socio-political and sociolinguistic contexts within which Bangladeshi education is located, providing a historical overview of English in education policy from British colonial rule to Pakistani rule to the post-independence period. It then explores the status of English language education within the Bangladeshi education system and describes the various actors that have shaped English language teaching policy and practice within Bangladesh. The section that follows explores policy outcomes and the complex set of factors which have hindered the successful implementation of quality English language teaching in Bangladesh. We draw our conclusion at the end, which also includes a set of recommendations for policy implementation in the country.

Medium of instruction in Africa: commentary

This special issue on the medium of instruction (MOI) in Africa is a sequel to a previous issue on the same topic on Asia published last year in this journal (vol. 14, no. 1). While we are aware that language boundaries do not correspond to political boundaries – either national or continental – we have been guided by our assumptions that the MOI situations were somewhat different in these two continents and therefore two separate issues would allow more in-depth exploration of these issues. In this introductory piece, we comment on the issues emerging from the African papers which are related to the issues highlighted in the Asian papers. Over the past decades, MOI policy has shifted dramatically in educational systems in Africa. At independence, African countries faced the questions of whether (i) to retain ex-colonial languages (French, English, Portuguese, and Spanish) as the sole MOI in public schools, (ii) replace them with the indigenous languages as MOI, or (iii) use both indigenous languages and ex-colonial languages an MOI. Some countries moved away from using the former colonial language as the sole MOI (e.g. French in Guinea and Burkina Faso), combining it with local languages, while others chose to move toward greater use of the ex-colonial language (e.g. Portuguese in Mozambique). This makes the MOI policy implementation in a number of African countries more complicated. This special issue comprises six contributions addressing issues in MOI implementation in a number of African polities. Trudell and Piper in their paper discuss the complexity of MOI implementation in Kenyan schools, providing a deeper understanding of language policy actors and their agency in the micro context. The study shows that language practices in Kenyan schools, as elsewhere in Africa, tend to prioritize the use of English as MOI at the expense of students’ first languages. These practices are seen as responsible for educational failure, including high school dropouts and students’ inability to read in both the mother tongue and English (e.g. Brock-Utne, 2001; Hornberger, 2002). It is noted that the demand for English as MOI is orchestrated by local stakeholders, and that the Kenyan national language policy mandating the use of the language of the catchment area in Grades 1–3 is being ignored. In a related paper, Jones uses an ethnographic approach to explore teachers’ perceptions of MOI policy implementation in Kenya, with a focus on a predominantly Sabaot primary school in the west of the country. She found that teacher classroom language practices in this context did not conform to the national MOI policy, which requires that the area language, in this case Sabaot, be used as MOI in early grades. This study also attests to the role of teachers’ agency in policy practice in local contexts. Pearson in her paper addresses MOI policy implementation in the neighboring country of Rwanda, which in 2008 replaced French with English as MOI in the schools. Using an innovative approach to explore language policy in practice, Pearson highlights some of the difficulties, due in large part to inadequate planning, in implementing the policy. Subsequently, Rwanda revised its MOI policy in 2011, suggesting that the previous policy, a

The construction of the universality of English within Saudi Arabian education contexts

ABSTRACT Discourses of the universality of English and its role in individual mobility and social development abound in the literature; these discourses have contributed to the global spread of English and to the development of English Language Teaching as a profession. Despite the ubiquity of the discourses of the value and universality of English, there has been limited research on how these discourses unfold in local contexts, how these discourses are reproduced or appropriated, and how these are translated into teaching and learning artefacts (e.g. policies and textbooks) and practices by teachers and students. This paper explores the construction of the discourse of the universality and value of English within education policies, curricular documents, and textbooks used in Saudi Arabian schools, and how these discourses then play out within teacher/student interactions in a rural Bedouin-dominated classroom. Our aim is to contribute to the understanding of global English and its discourses taking a local, situated perspective.