Multilingualism Challenges and Opportunities in the Irish Postprimary Education Sector

• In Event: 61.022 - A Perspective From Ireland Toward Justice: Culture, Language, and Heritage in Education Research and Praxis

Abstract

The linguistic and cultural dimensions of Irish society are a rich tapestry of official bilingualism overlaid with a vibrant multilingualism (Census 2011, Eurobarometer 2012). While the National Strategy Literacy and Numeracy for Learning and Life (LNLL) (DES, 2011) acknowledges some of the multilingual contexts that exist in schools, it is broadly framed as an English language document which does not address the multilingual environments in Irish-medium schools and in many English-medium schools. This paper presents a case study of two post-primary schools, one a linguistically diverse English-medium school and one an Irish-medium school, focusing on both the challenges and opportunities of linguistic diversity in the implementation of the LNLL strategy. The data derives from interviews with teachers, students and student-teachers.

Authors

• Ann Devitt, Trinity College Dublin

• Melanie Ni Dhuinn, Trinity College Dublin

• Brendan Mac Mahon, National University of Ireland, Galway