Mamtimyn Sunuodula

Analysing language education policy for China's minority groups in its entirety

Abstract Two main bodies of literature are identifiable in minority education policy studies in China. Many adopt a descriptive approach to examining policy documents and general outcomes in their historical contexts while others focus on evaluating preferential policies made to address inequality issues in minority education. In most discussions, educators and scholars analyse or speculate about rationale behind minority education policies promulgated by governments at various levels in different periods. Rare attempts are made to develop a conceptual framework to make it possible to analyse the policy process in its entirety. Scholars and educators have seldom defined the relevant actors of a policy, to relate the policy to issues concerning these actors in the matrix of the social hierarchy, and to evaluate how policy outcomes feed back into the policy making and implementation cycle. This paper proposes an analytical framework that addresses these issues on the basis of a comparative analysis of recent literature on bi/trilingual education policies, official policy documents for minority groups and their implementation. The comparative overview is complemented by three case studies in three regions where empirical data were collected.

Language Learning and Empowerment: Languages in Education for Uyghurs in Xinjiang

Occupying one sixth of China’s total land mass, Xinjiang is officially designated as the Uyghur Autonomous Region. While traditionally Uyghur was used as the medium of instruction in schools dominated by Uyghur children, bilingual education as it is enforced in these schools, as well as in ever-increasing merged schools, has increasingly come to mean using Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction (as well as teaching it as a school subject) throughout its education system. Uyghur children’s home language is taught only as a school subject. To gain first-hand information about the models used in schools, case studies were conducted in some secondary schools and universities accessible to the authors in Xinjiang. Findings approved commonly reported realities such as limited accessibility to trilingual education for Uyghur students. Using a combination of concepts such as cultural and symbolic capitals, identity and investment, the authors analysed the data to argue that, in many situations, Uyghur students actively reposition languages as economic, symbolic or cultural capital for investment and negotiate identity and power in the society.