Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education in the Asia-Pacific Region

Specific focus on mother tongue-based approaches as a means to enhance literacy and educational outcomes

This book explores the benefits and challenges of mother tongue-based multilingual education in numerous settings in the Asia-Pacific region. Centered on the experiences of the language communities concerned, it offers insights into the complex nature of language policy and practice in both more and less accommodating sociopolitical environments.

This book sheds light on the role of mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB MLE) as a means to enhance educational outcomes, creating a space for non-dominant languages alongside more dominant regional, national and international languages. It brings together a number of underlying concerns including the maintenance of non-dominant languages, the context of language policy and planning in shaping this process, the poor educational outcomes of many speakers of non-dominant languages in mainstream education programs and the economic and social importance of becoming multilingual. It focuses on the experiences of those involved in MTB MLE programs in early childhood, primary, secondary, tertiary and adult education from numerous settings in the Asia-Pacific region. This book provides readers with a detailed overview of MTB MLE, with a clear and insightful portrayal of the complex nature of policy and practice in both more accommodating and less accommodating sociopolitical environments.