Culture, language, and multilingual education: Foreign language teachers’ attitudes towards multilingual policy in Indonesia
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
INTRODUCTION. In a multilingual classroom, teachers play an essential role in encouraging and fostering a multilingual attitude and behavior at the school, as their actions can considerably influence their students. This study is intended to explore the teachers’ attitudes towards multilingual policy and multilingual pedagogy. Therefore, theories on language educational policy and multilingual pedagogy and practices are discussed as guidance. METHODS. The study used a survey research design, and the questionnaires were sent online to gather the data. The participants were 100 foreign language teachers who teach at high schools in an Indonesian province. They were asked to voluntarily respond to three main themes: Multilingual education knowledge, language education policy in Indonesia, and multilingual classroom practices in the questionnaire in the questionnaire. T-test and MANOVA were employed to investigate the difference between variables. RESULTS. The descriptive and inferential analyses revealed that the attitudes towards multilingual pedagogy implemented in Indonesia were almost uniform across different foreign language teachers having a positive attitude. Out of 18 statements, the high mean scores are related to the belief that learning another language could foster openness to other people’s language and culture and learning different languages can build students’ ability to use languages within a context. DISCUSSION. Taking for granted that participants have different ages, teaching experience, gender, and foreign language, there is no significant difference in their attitude towards multilingual education and practices. Most of the participants of this study believe that multilingual education contributes to some benefit for their students. Yet, the results also show that participants also view that the government has neither provided nor accommodated proper support for multilingual education.
Downloads
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
References
Alwasilah, C. (2013). Policy on Foreign Language Education in Indonesia. International Journal of Education, 7(1), 1-19.
Baker, C. (2006). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (4th ed.). Multilingual Matters.
Borg, S. (2006). Teacher cognition and language education: research and practice. Continuum.
Campbell, L. and Grondona, V. (2008). Ethnologue: languages of the world (review). Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, 84(3), 636-641. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.0.0054
Cenoz, J. (2009). Towards multilingual education. Basque Educational Research from an International Perspective. Multilingual Matters.
Cenoz, J. and Gorter, D. (2017). Language education policy and multilingual assessment. Language and Education Journal, 31(3), 231-248.
Canagarajah, S. and Wurr, A. J. (2011). Multilingual communication and language acquisition: new research directions. The Reading Matrix, 11(1), 1-15.
Cook, V. (1997). Monolingual bias in second language acquisition research. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 34, 35-50.
Creswell, J. (2016). 30 essential skills for the qualitative researcher. SAGE.
De Angelis, G. (2007). Third or additional language acquisition. Multilingual Matters.
De Angelis, G. (2011). Techers’ belief about the role of prior language knowledge in learning and how these influence teaching practices. International Journal of Multilingualism, 8(3), 216-234.
De Bot, K., Lowie, W. and Vespoor, M. (2007). A dynamic system theory approach to second language acquisition. Bilingualism, Language, and Cognition, 10(1), 7-21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728906002732
Dornyei, Z. (1990). Conceptualising motivation in foreign-language learning. Language Learning, 40(1), 45-78.
Fábián, G. (2004). Teachers’ ownership in the process of change in the culture of pedagogy. In: Magnus Persson (ed.), Towards the teacher as a learner: contexts for the new role of the teacher, 83-91.
Fábián, G. (2015). Non critical thinking: what if not thinking? Procedia: Social and Behavioral Science, 186, 699-703.
García-Mayo, M. P. and Rothman, J. (2012). L3 morphosyntax in the generative tradition: from the initial state and beyond. In J. Cabrelli Amaro, S. Flynn and J. Rothman (eds.), Third language acquisition in adulthood. John Benjamins (in press).
Garcia, O. and Wei, L. (2014). Language, languaging and bilingualism. Translanguaging: language, bilingualism, and education. pp. 5-18. Retrieved on September 2020 from https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137385765
Hamied, F. A. (2012). English in multicultural and multilingual Indonesian education. In A. Kirkpatrick and R. Sussex (eds.), English as an international language in Asia: implications for language education. Springer, pp. 63-78.
Haukas, A. (2016). Teachers’ belief about multilingualism and a multilingual pedagogical approach. International Journal of Multilingualism, 13(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2015.1041960
Herdina, P. and Jessner, U. (2000). Multilingual as an ecological system the case for language maintenance. ECOnstructing Language, Nature and Society: The Ecolinguistic Project Revisited. Essays in Honour of Alwin Fill. Stauffenburg Verlag.
Idris, S. (2014). Language policy and the construction of national and ethnic identities in Indonesia. US-China Education Review B, 4(10), 691-705.
Jessner, U. (2008). Teaching third languages: findings, trends and challenges. University of Innsbruck, Austria. Retrieved from https://www.unil.ch/files/live/sites/magicc/files/shared/Ressources/Jessner_2008_Teaching_third_languages.pdf
Jessner, U. (2014). On multilingual awareness or why multilingual learner is a specific language learner. In M. Pawlak and L. Aronin (eds.), Essential topics in applied linguistics and multilingualism, second language learning and teaching (pp. 175-184). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01414-2_10
Jessner, U. and Cenoz, J. (2019). Teaching English as a third language. In X. Gao (ed.), Second handbook of English language teaching (pp. 155e172). Springer.
Johnson, D. C. (2009). Ethnography of language policy. Language Policy, 8(2), 139-159.
Lambert, W. and Tucker, G. R. (1972). Bilingual education of children; the St. Lambert experiment. Newbury House Publishers.
Lasagabaster, D. and Huguet, A. (2007). The linguistic issue in some European bilingual contexts: some final considerations. Multilingualism in European Bilingual Contexts: Language Use and Attitudes. Multilingual Matters LTD.
Liddicoat, A. J. and Crozet, C. (eds.) (1997). Teaching culture as an integrated part of language teaching: an introduction. Teaching Language, Teaching Culture. Applied Linguistics Association of Australia.
Lucas, T., De Oliveire, L. C. and Villegas, A. M. (2014). Preparing linguistically responsive teachers in multilingual contexts. Englishes in Multilingual Contexts, Multilingual Education, 10, 219. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-017-8869-4_13
Margana (2009). Developing model of bilingual education at vocational high schools in Yogyakarta. Research Report of Competitive Grant Funded by DIKTI.
Montrul, S. A. (2013). Bilingualism and the heritage language speaker. The handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism (2nd ed.), 168-189. Wiley-Blackwell.
Nagy, W. E., García, G. E., Durgunoglu, A. Y. and Hancin-Bhatt, B. (1993). Spanish-English bilingual students’ use of cognates in English reading. Journal of Reading Behavior, 25(3), 241-259.
Neuman, W. L. (2014). Social research methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches (7th ed.). Pearson Education Limited.
Nunnally, J. C. (1997). The study of change evaluation research: principle concerning measurement experimental design and analysis. In E. L. Dlm. Struening and M. Gut-tentag (eds.), Handbook of evaluation research. Sage.
OECD (2009). Teaching practices, teachers’ beliefs, and attitudes in creating effective teaching and learning environment: 1st result from TALIS. OECD publishing https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264068780_6_en Perpres RI (2019). https://peraturan.go.id/common/dokumen/ln/2019/ps63-2019.pdf
Renandya, W. A. (2004). Indonesia. In H. Wahkam and Ruth Y. L. Wong (eds.). Language policies and education: the impact in East Asian countries in the next decade. Times Academic Press.
Romaine, S. (1995). Bilingualism (2nd ed.). Basil Blackwell Ltd.
UNESCO (2011). Enhancing learning of children from diverse language backgrounds: mother tonguebased bilingual or multilingual education in the early years. UNESCO.
Wang, D. (2016). Translanguaging in Chinese foreign language classrooms: students and teachers’ attitudes and practices. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2016.1231773