Taiwanese multilingualism, language ideology and teacher agency: An examination into the interpretation and practice of multilingual education policy

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Policy-practice interface in multilingual education: Ideology, agency, and social justice in the Global South

Proposal

Within the context of increased recognition by international organizations and nation-states of the importance of multilingual education for ensuring linguistic rights, Taiwan emerges as a uniquely understudied source of analytical data for exploring current efforts towards reparative linguistic justice in the shadow of colonial legacies. Influenced by successive regimes of settler-colonialism and nationalism ( Nesterova, 2024), Taiwan hosts an ever-evolving multilingual and multicultural environment. Despite the introduction of numerous multilingual education policies over the past decade, researchers tend to overlook Taiwan from debate “due to its peculiar geopolitical situation” (Kasai, 2022, p.511). The launching of a 2022-2026 plan for the revitalization of Indigenous and marginalized languages, called the Development of National Languages Act, is one such policy that remains critically unexamined. Amidst Taiwan’s evolving multilingual policy environment, this study seeks to ask: What factors inform the ideologies of policy arbiters? And, how do the ideologies of policy arbiters facilitate or constrain the practice of mother tongue-based multilingual education?

I use ‘language policy arbiter’ (Johnson, 2012) and ‘language ideology’ (Irvine & Gal, 2000) as key theories to analyze the assumptions and beliefs of Taiwanese Hokkien language teachers about language and discuss how they facilitate or hinder the implementation of mother tongue-based multilingual education. In examining the interpretation and appropriation of language policy, teachers emerge as critical players in the shaping of policy practice and implementation, thus revealing the gap between how policy is ‘declared’ (Baldauf, 2008) and how it is practiced. Studies have shown that the practice of multilingual education policies relative to declared policy language is influenced by the potential of language policy arbiters to ‘open or close’ spaces for multilingualism and mother tongue education (Johnson & Johnson, 2015). The capacity to maintain or subvert linguistic hegemony also depends upon the activity of teachers due to the impact of teacher language use on communication practices and language ideologies (Ricento & Hornberger, 1996).

This study employs an ethnographic approach (McCarty, 2014) to reveal agentive spaces in which teachers as language policy actors interpret, implement, and resist policy initiatives. I use semi-structured interviews with teachers to understand their ideologies and classroom observations to explore their agentive roles for mother tongue education. The emerging findings of this study indicate that while many micro-level policy arbiters are enthusiastic about the creation of new spaces for mother tongue education, a lack of attention and resources towards sharing policy goals with families places the burden of communicating the value of mother tongue-based multilingual education on teachers. The study further demonstrates that teachers still implicitly or explicitly support dominant language policies in education due to the influence of neoliberal ideologies reinforced by the push for internationalization and English language superiority. The study seeks to bridge the gap in the literature regarding the agency of teachers and the ideologies they develop in response to broader policy developments in Taiwan. This analysis aims to illuminate how practiced language policy either fosters or hinders the legitimization of marginalized languages, emphasizing the importance of aligning language policies with linguistic human rights and epistemic justice.

Author

• Charlotte Parker, Teachers College, Columbia University