Negotiating Multilingualism in Education: Ideologies and Inequalities in China for Minoritized Tibetans

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

Proposal

China’s multilingual education models, particularly bilingual education policies for ethnic minorities such as Tibetans, provide a critical lens for understanding how language policies are shaped by evolving ideologies of national integration, state-building, and cultural identity. This study draws on language ideologies (Kroskrity, 2010) and the politics of bilingualism (Heller, 2007) to examine: (1) how bilingual education is ideologically constructed and implemented in China, and what structural disparities emerge across different geographic and administrative contexts; and (2) how Tibetan educators, intellectuals, teachers, and families negotiate or resist these policies, revealing insights about cultural values, language ideologies, and forms of resistance.

Language ideology and the politics of bilingualism together offer a powerful lens for analyzing both state approaches to bilingual education and local responses. Kroskrity (2010) describes language ideologies as the beliefs, perceptions, and emotional investments people attach to language use and structure. These ideologies are inherently non-neutral and multidimensional, shaped by social, cultural, and political forces as well as lived experience. They often reinforce the political and economic interests of individuals, communities, and the nation-state, while guiding how groups evaluate language to serve collective goals. Assumptions about what counts as correct, moral, or aesthetically pleasing speech are grounded in social experience and linked to broader political and economic agendas. From a sociolinguistic perspective, Heller (2007) views language as social practice, showing how bilingualism is inseparable from contested state and national discourses and continually reshaped through everyday practices.

Within bilingual education, the choice of medium of instruction (MOI) is central, influencing language maintenance, cultural continuity, and access to opportunities (Tsui & Tollefson, 2004). MOI policies determine which social and linguistic groups gain political and economic access and which are marginalized. The politics of bilingualism thus highlights how language education can function both as a mechanism of control and as a site for local negotiation, where minority languages and identities are redefined, symbolically accommodated, or actively resisted.

This study uses a qualitative research design combining document analysis and ethnographic fieldwork. Documents included books, newspapers, institutional records, and media transcripts, while fieldwork involved informal interviews with Tibetan educators, public intellectuals, teachers, and families. Findings indicate that state policy, institutional investments, and curriculum innovations laid the foundation for a bilingual education system shaped by Qinghai’s distinctive linguistic and sociopolitical context. While the state frames bilingualism as a tool for educational access and national integration, local adaptations, such as flexible language models, targeted teacher recruitment, and Tibetan-language material development, reveal both opportunities and challenges in practice. Tibetan communities actively negotiate and reinterpret these policies, highlighting tensions, strategies, and ideologies that shape language learning, identity, and cultural survival.

By foregrounding Tibetan experiences under state language and education policies, this study contributes to broader discussions on multilingual education in Asia and beyond. It demonstrates how bilingual education can simultaneously reinforce social hierarchies and open new possibilities for language revitalization, cultural continuity, and reimagined belonging within contested sociopolitical and linguistic contexts.

Author

• Shamo Thar, Columbia University Teacher college