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International Journal of Bilingual Education andBilingualism

ISSN: 1367-0050 (Print) 1747-7522 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbeb20

Managing diversity in education. Language,policies, pedagogies

Fiona S. Baker

To cite this article: Fiona S. Baker (2015) Managing diversity in education. Language, policies,pedagogies, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 18:1, 127-130, DOI:10.1080/13670050.2014.928102

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2014.928102

Published online: 30 Jun 2014.

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BOOK REVIEW

Managing diversity in education. Language, policies, pedagogies, edited by DavidLittle, Constant Leung and Piet Van Avermaet, Bristol, Buffalo, Toronto, MultilingualMatters, 2014, 300 pp., 29.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-1-78309-079-2

Managing Diversity in Education. Languages, Policies, Pedagogies is a welcomeaddition to the New Perspectives on Language and Education series which featurescritical and interpretive, disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives on teaching andlearning, and language and literacy. It is an important text for linguists, theorists,academics, undergraduate and graduate students, professionals, and researchers involvedin working in diverse linguistic educational contexts. Edited and authored by experiencedlinguists, authors and researchers from eight countries, the book originated in thelanguage strand of New Migrations, New Challenges, an international conference held atTrinity College Dublin in the summer of 2010. The conference reflected on theunprecedented levels of immigration Ireland had experienced since the mid-1990s; sowhile many contributions concern Ireland, international contributions confirm thatIrelands emerging experience is not dissimilar from that of other countries. The bookis motivated by research designed to close the achievement gap of immigrant studentsreflected in several consecutive PISA studies (program for international student assess-ment) carried out by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD). Research had found the relative lack of success in responding to the diversityof school-going populations (xvii) and examines the variability across countriesregarding the extent to which immigrant students succeed academically. It reveals animpressive picture of research, policies and praxis which take account of the challenge ofdiversity and supports the transfer of plurilingual abilities into linguistic capital.

The introduction to the book provides a welcome summary of its three parts so thebook can be easily dipped into. Each chapter opens with a highlighted abstract of thechapters contents. Chapters range from analyses to empirical studies. The first part(six chapters) addresses policy and its implications; the second, pedagogical practice(four chapters) with the third part exploring the responses to the challenge of diversity toensure that children and adolescents from migrant backgrounds develop adequatelanguage proficiency in the language of schooling while enhancing the languageawareness of all pupils, and creating new opportunities for informal learning.

The first part of the book starts with a telling state-of-the-art chapter written by JimCummins. It analyzes ways in which Canada and the USA have incorporated the PISAdata and other research findings into their educational policy, but have given littleconsideration to the role of the first language as a cognitive tool and as a reflection ofimmigrant identity, or to the importance of reading engagement as a major factordetermining reading achievement. The chapter outlines an empirically based theoreticalframework that explicitly addresses the roles of literacy engagement and identitynegotiations of student achievement. Chapter 2, by Tracey Costley and Constant Leung,

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considers how policy is used to manage diversity in state-funded education in Englandand how it shapes and informs local schooling practices. The chapter draws onethnographic data to provide an account of the ways in which a London primary schoolconceptualizes and organizes EAL provision. The authors conclude that a pedagogic andcurricular vacuum has been engendered by a symbolic policy on EAL (xix). In effect,this means that teaching practices are commensurate with educational segregation on thebasis of students language and cultural backgrounds. The third chapter, authored byDaniel Fass, draws on interviews with seven educational policy-makers, triangulated withcurriculum documents for History, Geography, and Citizenship, to discuss the challengesand transformations that followed the PISA shock in 2001 in Germany, and presentstheir views on how to balance cultural diversity and social cohesion in post-PISAGermany. The chapter reveals that despite the efforts at educational reform that followedPISA there is still a way to go to close the gap between ethnic majority and migrantminority students, especially those from Turkish communities. In Chapter 4, by RachaelFionda, her small-scale research, informed by a broadly Gramscian perspective, supportsthe view that education systems reproduce dominant cultural ideology and in doing somaintain the disadvantage of cultural minorities. The key argument is a gap between theknowledge presented by the school system and the knowledge and experience thatmarginalized students bring to school. Kearneys Chapter 5, set in Ireland, presents thefindings of a questionnaire survey and semi-structured follow-up interviews to investigatethe attitudes of Irish post-primary teachers to the presence of migrant students in theirclassrooms. The chapter concludes that teacher attitudes are mediated by ideological andstructural factors and offers suggestions for the importance of training and support inmoderating teacher resistance to including children with diverse languages in theclassroom. The chapter reminds us that teachers play a critically important role in anyattempt to address issues of diversity in education. Chapter 6, authored by NiChonaill,focuses on higher education and concludes that the question of academic languagesupport for migrants, and indeed all non-native speakers of English, needs to beaddressed as of 27 designated institutions of Irelands Higher Education Authority(HEA), only 10 offer English language classes or other forms of language support tostudents with English as an additional language.

The second part focuses on pedagogy. Chapter 7, by Bronagh Catibusic, reports onresearch into English L2 acquisition among immigrant pupils in three Irish primaryschools. The chapter focuses on the development or oral skills and it compares empiricalevidence of L2 development with the L2 learning outcomes in the English LanguageProficiency Benchmarks of non-English speaking pupils at primary level. The resultsshow that a clear relation exists between the learning outcomes defined by thebenchmarks and actual patterns of L2 acquisition evident among the participating pupils.The benchmarks were said to offer a flexible map of L2 proficiency developmentappropriate to the individual language learning needs of EAL pupils. The chapter pointsto the need for empirical validation of transnational language proficiency scales.Chapter 8, by Patrick Grommes, researches migrant students language developmentand general language competence, concluding that they lack skills in Bildungssprache(academic language) and suggests that conflicting goals may be built into the system. InChapter 9, Stergiani Kostopoulou reports on a corpus linguistic analysis of textbooks insix curriculum subjects: English, Geography, History, CSPE (Civic, Social, and PoliticalEducation), Mathematics, and Science. The chapter outlines the rationale for the researchand summarizes the aims of the corpus analysis. It then describes the six textbooksderived from corpora and the methodological procedures employed to analyze them with

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the empirical findings. Overall, the study reveals the lexical variation that exists acrosssubjects and provides pedagogically useful information on curriculum language as awhole. Post-primary subject teachers often report that their students are not maximizingtheoretical learning potential and are unable to engage with subject-specific content at alevel that ensures comprehension. In Chapter 10, Zachary Lyons describes thedevelopment of a website that delivers a large array of learning materials based on thefindings of the corpus analysis presented in Chapter 9. It offers a new approach tothe teaching and learning of subject-specific language across the first four proficiencylevels of CEFR. The second part of the article reports on an empirical study that sought tomeasure the impact of these materials on teachers daily practices.

The third part aims to raise awareness of how children and adolescents from migrantbackgrounds develop adequate proficiency in the language of schooling. In Chapter 11,Deidre Kirwan describes the evolution of policy and practice in Blanchards town, Dublin,where she is principal. The chapter describes a school-wide approach that emphasizesamongst other factors, the important of multilingualism with a number of approachesoutlined that can flourish when teachers are committed to valuing all languages equally.In Chapter 12, Sven Sierens and Piet Can Avermaet respond to the situation in theNetherlands where, in Flanders in some schools, children are forbidden to speak anyother language at school apart from Dutch. Three strategies for a solution to exploitchildrens plurilingual repertories as didactic capital for learning are presented. A similarargument emerges in the work of Nathalie Auger, in Chapter 13, who points out that until2002 the French educational system treated mother tongues other than French as ahandicap. An analysis of the use of migrant languages in the classroom is rare, and leadsto a discussion of how such languages can be used in schools and what benefits such anapproach can bring. In the USA, Nelson Flores and Ofelia Garcia (Chapter 14) proposean alternative pedagogical approach that embraces the fluid language practices ofbilingual and multilingual students. In the complex multilingual society of Nepal, ShelleyTaylor in Chapter 15 introduces a model of multilingual language education designed tomanage linguistic diversity in Nepal and summarizes the reactions of minority anddominant group members to the model. A unique set of the Nepali initiative is that thereare some 140 reported languages in the country, which makes L1-based introduction forall a major undertaking and a multi-layered process. The chapter considers whoseinterests the initiative serves, how is has been implemented, and what other countries thatare grappling with diversity management can learn from the Nepali response. In the finalchapter, by Fie Velgheand Jan Blommaert, ways in which mobile phones have acquiredcommunicational prominence in a township near Cape Town, South Africa, areinvestigated. Mobile phones are becoming a resource that has acquired specific functionsby virtue of its ecological insertion into broader local economies and knowledge andresources. The chapter is an attempt to situate the use of mobile phones as learningdevices within the broader local communicative, social, and cultural framework.

This book is worthy of attention for its coverage of diversity across primary,adolescent, higher education, and vocational education internationally in eight countriesin Europe, North America, Canada, and Nepal. Each chapter can be easily accessedthrough its abstract, highlighted in bold, and the book has a transparent, accessible tone.The authors make steps toward achieving their goal of creating a text which bridgestheory, research, and practical application, by making sense of research to highlightrealistic, policy and practical concerns with ideas for implementation. Tables, graphicalrepresentations, extracts from interviews, samples of student writing, observationalextracts, and photographs are integrated throughout the chapters to support study

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findings. Although clearly numbered as figures, there is little consistency in theirpresentation though in terms of their font and layout. One illustration, on page 180, has afont which is almost too small to read. Overall, the book has a crisp, tight, writing stylewith clear flow, although at times there are issues with style and clarity of expression. Onpage 53, for example, the author makes reference to an immigration country and amigration background. Such minor errors, though, do not detract from its leaving animpression on the reader. It draws on a wealth of diverse practical and researchexperience in the international field and is an informative book with a balance of researchparadigms and methods. Appendices to some chapters give questionnaires and interviewschedules so studies can be usefully replicated in other contexts. A section: Reflectionand Discussion at the end of each chapter would have been a valuable addition to make amore powerful book for a university or practitioner audience. To conclude, this bookmakes a timely and important contribution to the educational field with its rich anddetailed picture of diversity in its many forms cultural, social, ethnic, and linguistic and its compelling argument that such diversity be used as a resource to improve learningfor all, to help develop the competences we need to function successfully in ourincreasingly globalized and rapidly changing world.

Fiona S. BakerEmirates College for Advanced Education, UAE

fbaker@ecae.ac.ae 2014, Fiona S. Baker

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2014.928102

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