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3 - Problematising the Key Issues in Policy and Implementation of Multilingual Programmes

from Part I - Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 December 2025

Piotr Romanowski
Affiliation:
University of Warsaw
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Summary

This chapter examines the ways that language-in-education policies respond to the multilingualism of student populations and outlines some key issue that have contributed to children’s first languages being relatively marginalised in language policy and implementation. It considers contexts in which multilingual educational programmes have been normalised in policy. It then examines some of the ideological positions about education that conflict with the aims of multilingual education. It examines how different understandings of the nature and purpose of education shape the wider context in which language-in-education policies are developed and implemented to identify some key constraints that operate in such contexts.

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