Abstract

The theme of this book is the multilingual classroom and the interrelationships, interactions and ideologies that apply in such classrooms. Drawing on studies from different multilingual communities in different parts of the world, the volume demonstrates the complex nature of the multilingual classroom, and in so doing provides a number of interdisciplinary perspectives for an international audience. The contributions to the volume are located within an ecological framework, one that emphasises the inter-relationships between languages and their speakers in multilingual and multi-cultural classrooms, the dynamics of multilingual classroom interaction, and the positionings of classroom languages and their speakers in dominant educational discourses. There are three main themes interweaved throughout the book:
Inter-relationships
• Relationships between languages and their speakers in multilingual/multicultural classrooms.
• The impact of educationally dominant languages on the ecologies of other languages.
Interactions
• The dynamics of multilingual classroom interaction for learning and teaching bilingually.
• The discursive meetings and mergings of socially situated participants within multilingual classrooms.
Ideology
• The positionings of classroom languages and their speakers in dominant educational discourses/conversations.
• The positionings of pedagogies, knowledge and participants in multilingual classrooms.

Angela Creese is a lecturer in Bilingualism in Education and TEFL at the School of Education, University of Birmingham. Peter Martin is a senior lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the School of Education, University of Leicester.