Multilingualism(s) and system-wide assessment: a southern perspective
SOURCE: Language and Education
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2016
TITLE AUTHOR(S): K.Heugh, C.Prinsloo, M.Makgamatha, G.Diedericks, L.Winnaar
KEYWORDS: ACCESS TO EDUCATION, EQUALITY, MULTILINGUALISM
DEPARTMENT: Equitable Education and Economies (IED)
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 9517
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/10491
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/10491
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2016
TITLE AUTHOR(S): K.Heugh, C.Prinsloo, M.Makgamatha, G.Diedericks, L.Winnaar
KEYWORDS: ACCESS TO EDUCATION, EQUALITY, MULTILINGUALISM
DEPARTMENT: Equitable Education and Economies (IED)
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 9517
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/10491
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/10491
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
Rapidly changing demographics challenge education systems everywhere. Multilingualism, in particular, brings challenges in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Here we draw attention to contexts and practices of multilingual education in southern settings that differ from those in northern ones. Whereas much of the literature indicates that multilingual assessment is necessary for reasons of social justice and equity, it remains either elusive or contained to minority communities in Europe and North America. The purpose here is to draw attention to a century of system-wide bilingual and multilingual education policies, practices and assessment in South Africa. The bi-/multilingual design of large scale assessment measures student knowledge in two or three languages (as conventionally understood). Although not anticipated in policy, it also permits students to make use of their bilingual or multilingual repertoires in high-stakes examinations. We demonstrate that, while challenging to design and administer, students' multilingual repertoires can be brought into the design of large-scale assessment. System-wide use of bi-/multilingual assessments can also address concerns of equity and social justice. Longitudinal data from system-wide assessment further indicate that code-switching and trans-languaging are promising only when used to increase students' repertoires for both horizontal purposes and vertical access to language/s of power.-
Related Research Outputs:
- The paradoxical use of interpreting in psychiatry
- Whose right it is anyway? equality, culture and conflicts of rights in South Africa
- Problems and possibilities in multilingual classrooms in the Western Cape
- Whose right is it anyway?: equality and conflicts between state policy, culture and rights in South Africa
- Consolidating resources and managing growth? Challenges and roles of private providers of higher education in Sub-Saharan Africa
- 'All mouth and no trousers'
- Math schools are not equal: state of math and science education: tracking development progress
- The difficult geometry of change
- The political stakes of academic research: perspectives on Johannesburg
- Marginalised and demonised: lesbians and equality - perceptions of people in a local Western Cape community
- Literacy and bi/multilingual education in Africa: recovering collective memory and expertise
- The country we want to live in: hate crimes and homophobia in the lives of black lesbian South Africans
- The evaluation of group differences and item bias, across two language groups, of the English version of a standardised test of academic language proficiency
- When a school principal does not believe in the impossible: from multilingual explorations to system-wide assessment
- Multilingual education in Ethiopia: what assessment shows about what works and what doesn't
- Multilingual education works when 'peripheries' take the centre stage
- The medium of instruction in the primary schools in Ethiopia: a study and its implications for multilingual education
- Multilingual education works: from the periphery to the centre
- Linguistic diversity
- Linguistic skills development in the home language and first additional language