Mobilizing Multilingual Identities

This book draws together leading international scholars in applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and language teacher education to explore language policy, teaching, and learning approaches that foreground the learning needs and changing identities of multilingual language learners.

The edited collection asks and answers the question: How do we best mobilize learners’ multilingual identities in language policy, teaching, and learning? Through their reflections, illustrations of professional work, and research, contributors illuminate useful connections among language education policies, language learning and teaching, and the changing identities of multilingual language learners, along with their implications for teacher education and professional development.

With a global focus on language policy and teaching, the book:

• examines the mobilization of multilingual language learner identities as central participants in the policy-learning-identity nexus – that is, who they are and who they become
• brings attention to disparities among planned language-in-education policies, their implementation, and their perceived and real outcomes in multiple geopolitical contexts
• reports on the (un)intended teaching and learning (and teacher education) practices at the micro level that stem from policy decisions made at the top-down meso/macro-levels
• suggests implications for language teacher education programs and practices

This text is essential for graduate students in applied linguistics, language teaching and learning; teacher educators working in language education institutions; as well as policy makers working in language and global education.

Gary Barkhuizen is Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Mi Yung Park is Associate Professor of Asian Studies at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Stephen May is Professor of Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.