Effectiveness of lending for vocational education and training: lessons from World Bank experience

This paper reviews the Bank involvement in the vocational education and training (VET) sub-sector in the 1990s. The paper aims to do just that, by mainly seeking answers to the following questions: 1) How has the Bank performed in its lending services to its clients in VET? 2) How have VET projects performed in terms of meeting stated objectives? 3) What factors led to the success, or failure of Bank operations? Based on what has been learned, the paper provides suggestions about how the performance of future VET interventions can be improved. This review concerns itself primarily with implementation performance, and proposes measures to improve project outcomes.ICT Policy and Strategies,Health Economics&Finance,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Teaching and Learning,Banks&Banking Reform

Translanguaging and Public Service Encounters: Language Learning in the Library

This article explores the information desk of a city library as a site for language learning. Using a linguistic ethnographic approach, the interactions between a customer experience and information assistant and the many library users who approach her information desk were analysed. Findings are that, in addition to providing information about library resources, information desks are sites at which bits and pieces of different languages are taught and learned. Such language teaching and learning episodes created interactions of inclusion and welcome that went far beyond purely transactional information. Rather, language‐related episodes created moments of human contact and engagement, which were upheld through the translanguaging practices of interactants, the disposition and workplace competence of library staff, and the spatial ecology of the information desk. Furthermore, the article contributes to ongoing theoretical debates about translanguaging by noting that normativity and pressure toward uniformity are as much a part of languaging processes as creativity and flexibility. Our definition of translanguaging recognises the opposing pull of centrifugal and centripetal forces. The article ends by asking what schools, and language education, might learn from public libraries in creating arenas that maintain communitarianism, diversity of expression, and the development of civic skills

Edulingualism: linguistic repertoires, academic tasks and student agency in an English-dominant university

This article reports on a study that examined how a group of plurilingual students use their linguistic repertoires to achieve a number of purposes such as performing identity, learning and socialising, and negotiating with structure in an English-dominant university. In order to capture the dynamic relationship between language-as-resource, academic tasks and agency in this particular context, the article proposes ‘edulingualism’ as a conceptual and analytic lens. To this end, the article examines multiple data sets (narratives, reflective accounts, recorded interactions and texts) that show how, by mobilising their multilingual resources, these students achieve their purposes and take ownership of their learning experiences within a monolingual learning space

Towards a repertoire-building approach: multilingualism in language classes for refugees in Luxembourg

This contribution examines how the diverse language resources that teachers and learners bring to the classroom can support the process of language learning. It draws on a range of linguistic ethnographic data collected at a French language course that was attended mostly by Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Luxembourg. Drawing on the analysis of multilingual interactional practices, the article sheds light on some of the opportunities for learning that emerged as a result of translation, translanguaging and receptive multilingualism. It discusses the relevance of these practices for building a repertoire of resources that enables forced migrants to communicate in multilingual contexts such as Luxembourg

Language motivation in a reconfigured Europe: access, identity, autonomy

In this paper, I propose that we need to develop an appropriate set of conceptual tools for examining motivational issues pertaining to linguistic diversity, mobility and social integration in a rapidly changing and expanding Europe. I begin by drawing on research that has begun to reframe the concept of integrative motivation in the context of theories of self and identity. Expanding the notion of identity, I discuss the contribution of the Council of Europe's European Language Portfolio in promoting a view of motivation as the development of a plurilingual European identity and the enabling of access and mobility across a multilingual Europe. Next, I critically examine the assumption that the individual pursuit of a plurilingual identity is unproblematic, by highlighting the social context in which motivation and identity are constructed and embedded. To illuminate the role of this social context, I explore three inter-related theoretical frameworks: poststructuralist perspectives on language motivation as 'investment'; sociocultural theory; and theories of autonomy in language education. I conclude with the key message that, as with autonomy, language motivation today has an inescapably political dimension of which we need to take greater account in our research and pedagogical practice

Teaching and assessing EIL in local contexts around the world

The book addresses currently contested issues in English Language Teaching (ELT), especially with regard to the need to revisit and contextualize the existing monolithic concepts of English and native speaker to a broader and more accommodative view of pluralistic concept of World Englishes. McKay and Brown advocate the recognition that ELT learners are equally legitimate users of Englishes, and argue for the contextual grounding of ELT teaching and learning based on students’ need. It is a particularly relevant book for teachers of English and students from outer and expanding circles to provide them with greater understanding of their learning goals and how to achieve them. Divided into seven chapters, the first three chapters deal with an overview of the social and educational context of English as an International Language (EIL) classrooms and then it moves on to the discussion of the stereotype of

Conflicting language ideologies and contradictory language practices in Singaporean bilingual families

Informed by family language policy (FLP) as the theoretical framework, I illustrate in this paper how language ideologies can be incongruous and language policies can be conflicting through three multilingual families in Singapore representing three major ethnic groups – Chinese, Malay and Indian. By studying their family language audits, observing their language practices, and engaging in conversations about their language ideologies, I look at what these families do and do not do and what they claim to do and not to do. Data were collected over a period of 6 months with more than 700 minutes of recording of actual interactions. Analysis of the data reveals that language ideologies are ‘power-inflected’ and tend to become the source of educational and social tensions which in turn shape family language practices. In Singapore these tensions are illustrated by the bilingual policy recognising mother tongues (MTs) and English as official languages, and its educational policy establishing English as the medium of instruction. The view of English as having instrumental values and MTs as having cultural functions reveals that language choices and practices in family domains are value-laden in everyday interactions and explicitly negotiated and established through FLP