Plurilingual Tensions and Monolingual Habitus in English Education Policy
by Professor Francis M. Hult
In 2011, a new set of national curricula took effect in Sweden. Along with the curricula came new syllabi for upper secondary language subjects. The reforms aimed to craft curricula that address relationships between language and globalization, with attention to both diversity in contemporary Sweden and mobility across international contexts. Emerging from this two-fold focus is a tension: On the one hand, there is a strong emphasis on target language use as an attempted correction of earlier contrastive teaching approaches that have been biased against students with mother tongues other than Swedish (cf. Tholin, 2014). On the other hand, the syllabi are also informed by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) which places an emphasis on plurilingualism in language learning. The purpose of the present study is to examine how this tension manifests itself in language education policy documents and to consider the practical implications for language educators.
To date, the 2011 curricula have not been carefully investigated from the perspective of educational language policy. Accordingly, a discourse analysis of policy approach (e.g., Hult, 2015; Johnson, 2011, Scollon, 2008) is used to offer a critical reading of the core documents governing upper secondary language teaching in Sweden: the national syllabi for language subjects, the accompanying guide and commentary on the syllabi, and the general upper secondary curriculum. Analysis reveals a persistent ‘monolingual habitus’ (Gogolin, 1997) with nominal attention to plurilingual development and minimal support for translingual practice (e.g., Canagarajah, 2013; García & Wei, 2014) in language teaching. It is also shown, however, that there is some ‘implementational space’ (Hornberger, 2005) for teachers to leverage in order to attend to plurilingualism when putting policy into practice. These policy spaces are discussed with respect to pedagogical implications as well as areas on which to build in future policy reforms.
Francis M. Hult works at the crossroads of education, sociolinguistics, and discourse studies. He is known for his discourse analytic research about the sociopolitics of national language policies, language teacher engagement with educational policies, and the visual use of language in multilingual communities. Professor Hult has lectured widely on these topics in Asia, Europe, and North America. He is currently a professor at the Jönköping University School of Education and Communication as well as director of studies for English at Lund University where he also coordinates the English teacher education program. His recent books include Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning (with Johnson) and Language Policy and Language Acquisition Planning (with Siiner and Kupisch).
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