The book explores the way our traditionally monolingual school systems are being challenged by students from diverse language backgrounds, forcing educationalists to question entrenched ideologies of language and challenging teachers in their everyday classrooms to rethink their relationships to language learning and the issue of diversity.

With contributions from leading scholars all around the world, this volume underlines the ever-pressing need for new language in education policies to include all learners’ voices in the multilingual classroom and to empower teachers to develop responsive and transformative pedagogies. Using testimonies, narratives and examples from different international contexts, this book points clearly to what can be achieved practically in the multilingual classroom so that multilingual learners’ voices are legitimated, while also addressing the complex inter-relating sociolinguistic issues around the promotion of bilingualism and multilingualism in education.

PART 1. THE ECOLOGY OF THE MULTILINGUAL CLASSROOM: FROM COMPLEXITY TO PEDAGOGY

1A Perspectives on the learners

Angela Creese and Adrian Blackledge: Ideologies and Interactions in Multilingual Education: What can an Ecological Approach Tell us about Bilingual Pedagogy?

Carola Mick: Heteroglossia in a Multilingual Learning Space: Approaching Language beyond “Lingualisms”

Christine Hélot: Children’s Literature in the Multilingual Classroom: Developing multilingual literacy acquisition

Anne Marie De Mejía: Multilingualism and Pedagogical Practices in Colombia’s Caribbean Archipelago

1B: Perspectives on the teachers

Kate Menken, Alexander Funk and Tatyana Kleyn: Teachers at the Epicenter: Engagement and Resistance in a Biliteracy Program for “Long-Term English Language Learners” in the U.S.

Bernadette O’ Rourke: Negotiating Multilingualism in an Irish Primary School Context Pierrot Ngomo: Exploring New Pedagogical Approaches in the Context of Multilingual Cameroon

PART II: DECONSTRUCTING THE MYTH OF MONOLINGUALISM Perspectives on Identities, Ideologies and Politics

Ute Walker : Linguistic Diversity as a Bridge to Adjustment: Making the Case for Bi/multilingualism as a Settlement Outcome in New Zealand

Michael Clyne: Three is too many in Australia: Questioning the Monolingual Mindset

Zvi Bekerman: Integrated Bilingual Education: Ethnographic Case Studies from the Palestinian-Jewish ‘Front’