A Critical Look at Language Policies Outside the Classroom

Originally published in Contemporary Psychology: APA Review of Books, 2003, Vol 48(5), 674-676. Reviews the book, Languages Policies in Education: Critical Issues by James W. Tollefson (Ed.) (see record 2001-18186-000). The review is mainly from the viewpoint of the language policy in the education field. First, the reviewer introduces the range and nature of the content of the book. Then, the critical review is presented. The reviewer concludes with a call for more ethnographic approaches as well as psycholinguistic approaches in the study of language policy in education. To achieve a better understanding of educational language policies, research needs to bridge a macrolevel descriptive analysis of educational language policy and ethnographic accounts of the day-to-day realities of how those policies are implemented in particular educational contexts. Not only an ethnographic approach, but also psychological approaches can contribute to this accounting of the day-to-day realities. Specifically, they can shed light on how different actors, including policymakers, teachers, students, and parents, create, accept, or resist educational language policies in their planning and implementation phases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)