UNESCO and Multilingual Education: Discourse, Dilemma, and Disjuncture

• In Event: Roundtable Session 39
  In Roundtable Session: Voice, Dissent, and Language Ideology

Abstract

A flourishing of multidisciplinary scholarship, which unequivocally substantiates the encompassing benefits of mother language-based MLE (MLB-MLE) during the last six odd decades, has occasioned an emerging paradigm shift from deficit to affirmative views of MLB-MLE. UNESCO has been at the forefront of this movement since its inception, with a remarkable history of constitutional, normative, and advocacy support for MLE. This study uses both discourse analysis and focused critical ethnography to analyze UNESCO’s MLE norms, operational dynamics and metadiscourses in juxtaposition with her image among MLE stakeholders. It finds that despite UNESCO’s strong support for MLE, UNESCO’s structures and operations embody a paradox that limits its capacity to create norms, with wide-ranging conceptual, policy and practice implications.

Authors

• Desmond I. Odugu, Lake Forest College

• Paschal Zikora

• Agatha Amaka Ladipo