Managing Diversity in Education

Diversity - social, cultural, linguistic and ethnic - poses a challenge to all educational systems. Some authorities, schools and teachers look upon it as a problem, an obstacle to the achievement of national educational goals, while for others it offers new opportunities. Successive PISA reports have laid bare the relative lack of success in addressing the needs of diverse school populations and helping children develop the competences they need to succeed in society. The book is divided into three parts that deal in turn with policy and its implications, pedagogical practice, and responses to the challenge of diversity that go beyond the language of schooling. This volume features the latest research from eight different countries, and will appeal to anyone involved in the educational integration of immigrant children and adolescents.

David Little is Associate Professor Emeritus and Fellow Emeritus at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. He has been a regular contributor to the Council of Europe’s language education projects since the 1980s. In 2010, the National University of Ireland awarded him an honorary doctorate in recognition of his contribution to language education in Ireland and further afield.

Constant Leung is Professor of Educational Linguistics in the School of Education, Communication and Society, King’s College London. His research interests include academic literacies, additional/second language teaching and assessment, language policy, and multilingualism. He is co-editor of Language Assessment Quarterly, editor of research issues of TESOL Quarterly, and serves as a member of the editorial boards of Language and Education and the Modern Language Journal. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK). His work in developing the English as an Additional Language Assessment Framework for Schools (funded by the Bell Foundation) won the 2018 British Council ELTons International Award for Innovation.

Piet Van Avermaet is a Professor in the Linguistics Department, Ghent University, Belgium and Head of the Centre for Diversity & Learning, Ghent University. His research interests include diversity and social inequality in education, multilingual and multicultural education, and language and the integration of immigrants.