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Article published In:
Policy and practice in early language learning
Edited by Janet Enever and Patricia Driscoll
[AILA Review 32] 2019
► pp. 10–35
CLASSROOM PEDAGOGY

Looking beyond the local

Equity as a global concern in Early Language Learning

| Umeå University | King’s College London

Around the world, the popularity of English has escalated, particularly at the primary school level (Butler, 2015), yet provision of sufficient qualified teacher expertise to meet demand continues to be inadequate. The OECD report on Equity and Quality in Education reports that: “The highest performing education systems are those that combine equity with quality. They give all children opportunities for a good quality education” (OECD, 2012). This paper adopts a sociohistorical perspective to critically examine the OECD criteria of achieving equity and quality through fairness and inclusiveness with reference to Uruguay, India and China – all contexts where English has been introduced at primary and kindergarten levels. The analysis draws on data from classroom observations, interviews with teachers and key stakeholders. Findings indicate that while access to the quality provision of English in primary schools and kindergartens has been substantially expanded in recent years in each jurisdiction, the challenges of ensuring universal quality provision have proved complex under conditions where the pre-existing historical and political contexts have limited progress towards equity.

Keywords: Early Language Learning, global, equity, political
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • A brief history of primary foreign languages provision
  • Conceptualising equity in education
  • Equity and digital technology in Uruguay
    • Uruguay national curriculum background
    • A brief historical perspective on language and language planning in Uruguay
    • Current provision for primary foreign languages in Uruguay
    • Measuring equity in primary foreign language provision in Uruguay
  • Equity and free primary education in India
    • Background of primary education provision in India
    • A brief historical perspective on language and language planning in India
    • Current languages provision in Indian primary schools
    • Evaluating equity in primary languages provision in India
  • Equity in language education for Shanghai kindergartens
    • Kindergarten provision in Shanghai
    • A brief historical perspective on language and language planning in China
    • Current languages provision in Shanghai kindergartens
    • Evaluating equity in primary languages provision in Shanghai kindergartens
  • Discussion and conclusions
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 7 April 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/aila.00019.ene
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