Mapping the languages used by primary school students in Cote d'Ivoire

• In Event: Facilitating Teacher Professional Development in Multilingual Contexts of Cote d'Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Senegal

Proposal

For countries to develop policies and programs that effectively use students' familiar languages in the classroom, they first need a thorough understanding of the languages spoken throughout the country. In this final presentation of the panel, we focus on the process of mapping the languages used by students across multilingual low- and middle-income countries with the example of Cote d'Ivoire. According to estimates, there are between 60 and 80 languages spoken and used throughout the country, 10 of which are covered in existing bilingual education experiments, while French remains the official language of instruction. Leaders in the country's Ministry of Education and Literacy have indicated that mapping the languages that students in primary schools across the country is a key priority for developing policies and strategic plans for promoting the use of local languages in schools.

In our presentation, we will describe the need for language mapping in Cote d'Ivoire and specify the method for assessing the languages children speak and understand. We will detail our method for sampling schools and students throughout the country, as well as the semantic fluency assessment that identifies which languages students know and classifies students as monolingual, bilingual, or emerging bilingual. We will then showcase the findings of the language mapping study from select regions and provide recommendations for using the language mapping data to inform education policies and programs. By probing into an example of language mapping research in Cote d'Ivoire, we demonstrate the importance of such work for language of instruction policy development and how such a process could be carried out in other countries as well.

Author

• Chinmaya Holla, American Institutes for Research (AIR)