Policy Meets Practice: A Multimodal Exploration of Language Education in Galician Schools

Policy Meets Practice: A Multimodal Exploration of Language Education in Galician Schools examines how language policy operates in classroom settings by analysing the processes through which policy is articulated, contextualised, and enacted in everyday pedagogical practice.

This study into the experiences of teachers in Galicia, where Galician, Spanish, signed, and migrant languages coexist, offers scholars globally a foundation for understanding the central role of educators in the interpretation, negotiation, and enactment of language policy. Using a multimodal methodological framework that combines critical discourse analysis, qualitative interviews, and visual data, the book examines the institutional, ideological, and material conditions that shape how educators work with linguistic diversity in their classrooms. In doing so, it brings together scholarship on autochthonous minority, migrant, and signed languages, and interrogates the persistent separation of these in policy discourse and educational practice.

Policy Meets Practice will be of interest to researchers and postgraduate students in sociolinguistics, language policy and planning, and multilingual education who will gain critical insights into the relationship between language, policy, and education.

Nicola Bermingham is a Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Liverpool, UK. Her research lies at the intersection of sociolinguistics, educational linguistics, and Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics, with a particular focus on Galicia and Cape Verde. Dr Bermingham is the principal investigator of British Academy-funded project “Monolingual Schools in Multilingual Societies: rethinking language and education in Cape Verde” (2023-2025). In 2020, she was appointed as the Hispanic Studies representative for the University Council for Languages (UCFL). She also served as Chair of the International Association for the Study of Spanish in Society (2017-2023) and was appointed to the AHRC Peer Review College 2022. Dr Bermingham is Editor of the Modern Languages Open Linguistics Section, Assistant Editor of the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, and has published widely in journals including the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Language, Culture and Curriculum, and the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies.

Renée DePalma is a Professor at the University of A Coruña (Spain), where she coordinates the ECIGAL research group dedicated to global citizenship education. Recent projects include an Association of Hispanists of Great Britain & Ireland Visiting International Fellowship (2022-2023), the British Academy/Leverhulme-funded project entitled Monolingual Schools in Multilingual Societies: rethinking language and education in Cape Verde (2023-2025) and the Spanish Education Ministry funded project “GLOBOJOVEN” that collaborates with youth in researching their own experiences with Critical Global Citizenship (2024-2027). She has researched minoritised languages in educational contexts in the US, Spain, and Cabo Verde, with publications in journals such as Language, Culture and Curriculum, Modern Languages Open, and Linguistics and Education.