13/02/2021
Critical ethnography of language policy in the global south: insights from research in Timor-Leste (Cabral/Martin-Jones, 1 Feb 2021)
"Tetum is taught as a subject in the schools but support for the development of teaching resources is not on a par with the support for Portuguese. Moreover, there is relatively little support for teachers with regard to the teaching of Tetum, or the use of Tetum across the school curriculum. Most primary school teachers speak Tetum, but few have had experience of writing it in styles and genres associated with formal education.
At the same time, as we see in three of the articles in this collection, Tetum has become a key communicative resource for teaching and learning in different sectors of education. Despite its widespread use, a central paradox lies in the ways in which it is viewed, talked about and represented as lacking in full “languageness”, particularly by people such as university lecturers and policy-makers who occupy prestigious positions in Timorese educational circles. There needs to be debate, within different sectors of the state education system, regarding the development of new forms of support for use of the language as a resource for teaching and knowledge-building."
This special issue focuses on language policy processes at work, in different sectors of education, in one small multilingual nation situated on the global periphery: the nation of Timor-Leste, in South East Asia. The four articles in this special issue draw on research of a broadly critical and eth...
