Language ideologies and epistemic exclusion

Abstract

Research in educational linguistics is now challenging the efficacy of monolingual approaches that often dominate educational practices in multilingual settings. In most African nations where multilingualism is the norm, there remains a persistent reluctance by educational stakeholders (principals, teachers, parents, and students) to embrace multilingualism in education or to reposition local languages as resources in classrooms. This article draws on qualitative data from a multilingual, rural, fourth-grade classroom in Kenya to interrogate the articulated ideologies and their effects on communicative practices as voiced by the participants and by observing actual classroom practices. Bourdieu's notions of habitus, legitimate language, and symbolic power serve as analytic lenses for enhancing our understanding of the power of language ideologies. From the data, "monoglossia" emerged as the key operating ideology, with time-on-task pedagogical practice helping to consolidate these monoglossic practices. The most visible effect of this ideology was silencing student engagement in the classroom. I argue that an awareness of these articulated ideologies and their observable effects on students' learning and language-use behaviors is important for challenging the subordination of home languages and the epistemic exclusion of the children who speak marginalized languages. Ideological awareness may open spaces for alternative and inclusive educational approaches.

Navigating Authoritative Discourses in a Multilingual Classroom: Conversations With Policy and Practice

“…The use of English‐only instruction in ELA discourse aligned with and reproduced the school's institutional monolingual policy (cf. Kiramba, ).…”

“…EMI in African classrooms has impacted students’ engagement variously. Classroom discourse studies in African classrooms have often shown prevalence of teacher‐centered discourse patterns, which have been said to contribute to silencing and/or exclusion of students’ sociocultural experiences and to underachievement; hence, exclusion from epistemic access (Bunyi, ; Kiramba, , ; Ngwaru, ). This is because EMI has often marginalized home languages that are familiar to students, and thus linguistic hierarchies have been reproduced in these postcolonial settings.…”

“…For instance, although translanguaging generally permeates classroom discourses across multiple contexts, tensions around translingual practices in multilingual classrooms arise (McGlynn & Martin, ). Such tensions include those between an official language policy that privileges English and the multilingual realities and localities of students inside and outside of the classroom (Kiramba, ), due to continued ideological preference for standard language varieties (Cenoz & Gorter, ; Kiramba, ; Sayer, ). Other controversies include language testing and assessment (Taylor & Snoddon, ) and standard conventions of writing (Canagarajah, ).…”

“Her sentence is correct, isn't it?”: Regulative discourse in English medium classrooms

“…This positioning is consistent with a strong emphasis on transmission based instruction (cf. Ngware et al, 2012;Pontefract & Hardman, 2005;Kiramba, 2018) and the unidirectional transmission of knowledge from the teacher or textbooks to the students. Consciously or not, teachers employ isn't it in classrooms and schools that are situated within broader discourses of authority and power (Bunyi, 2008), and embedded in socio-cultural contexts that are often hierarchical.…”

“…Thus, in many parts of the world, instruction and classroom talk remain predominantly teacher centered (cf. Kiramba, 2018;Opoku-Amankwa, 2009;Vaish, 2008;Weber, 2008), and foster a "traditional" view of teachers as experts who transmit knowledge to passive learners.…”