Developing a Multicultural Framework of Teacher Agency Development for the Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education in the Bangsamoro Philippines

• In Event: Multilingual Education Across Global Contexts

Proposal

This paper aims to develop a multicultural framework of teacher agency development for the Philippine Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE). Studies show that MTB-MLE is overly treated for literacy. As such, the focus is limited to the pedagogical or instrumentalist view making teachers mere receivers and implementers of MTB-MLE policy, constraining their agency. This setup offers inadequate attention to the sociocultural dimension involving identity and cultural diversity. To this end, taking the case of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, I will show the essence of the mother tongue used for literacy, identity formation, and intercultural relations, considered as language use factors for teacher agency development. Effective multilingual education will depend on the adequate support of these language use factors as instrumental in teacher agency achievement and education quality improvement. The framework takes these three as intersecting circles in which the area of overlap is the teacher agency. Language for literacy enables individuals to acquire learning tools through mother tongue use. Meanwhile, language for identity formation is about recognizing, affirming, and enhancing one’s identity through encouraging mother tongue use. Finally, language for intercultural relations entails accepting and respecting cultural diversity or multiculturalism and linguistic diversity or multilingualism.

Author

• Fernigil L. Colicol, Mindanao State University-Tawi-Tawi