Revisiting the Trilingual Language-in-Education policy in the Seychelles National Curriculum Framework and Subject Curricula: Intentions and Practice
2016 (English)In: Island Studies, ISSN 1694-2582, Vol. 3, no 1, p. 50-59Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
The policy documents of a country’s education system can provide evidence of that particular country’s vision for its people’s socio-economic, socio-cultural and academic development. Such documents can also say much about the power relations between different languages that might be represented within it. Educators, policy makers, educational leaders, teachers, learners and parents are some key players directly or indirectly affected by these policy documents. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and Spolsky’s (2004, 2012) framework for language policy analysis, this paper investigates the trilingual language-in-education policy in the Seychelles National Curriculum Framework (2013) and three Subject Curricula (English, Kreol Seselwa and French), with the aim to explore how the documents relate at the levels of policy planning, implementation and practice. Our findings reveal that there are discrepancies between the overarching Curriculum Framework, where all three national languages are given central roles and equal status, and the Subject Curricula, where clear differences in the power and functions of the languages emerge. Further, on a more pragmatic level, it is of concern that the current policy documents do not explicitly acknowledge the role of the language instruction as a vehicle for learning when describing learning goals and terminal objectives – a good understanding of English (the current L2 medium of instruction) is a prerequisite for succeeding in education. Further, the lack of attention to the question of L2 writing literacy and the fact that Seychellois students have to become fairly advanced English writers at an early age if they want to communicate their knowledge across the curriculum is particularly disconcerting.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Seychelles: University of Seychelles , 2016. Vol. 3, no 1, p. 50-59
Keywords [en]
language-in-education planning, L2 medium of instruction, Kreol Seselwa, multilingualism.
National Category
Specific Languages
Research subject
Linguistics
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-53728OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-53728DiVA, id: diva2:1051296
Conference
International Conference on Education, University of Seychelles, July 5-8, 2015
2016-12-012016-12-012018-01-13Bibliographically approved