Education, language policy and language use in the Philippines

The roles of language policy and language practice and use in education have been regarded to influence the efficacy of teaching and learning in the school setting. With the rise of globalisation and internationalisation of services in education, the objective of producing manpower that is equipped to the demands of the knowledge based economy has realigned government policies worldwide to put education at the forefront of its development plans. From the rise of English language as 'the' language for globalisation calls for a more inclusive and locally-oriented mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTB-MLE), this article will discuss broadly the dynamics of language, access and influence, and will look at the Philippines as a country case study of explicit and implicit declarations in language policy and use, as affecting the education sector, and access to the labour market.

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Bilingual and Multilingual Education

(Co-authored with Ruanni Tupas) Bilingual education in the Philippines – the use of English in mathematics and science and Filipino, the national language, in all other subjects – is a complex story of postcolonial, neocolonial, nationalist, and ethnolinguistic ideologies and relationships. Thus, the recent law mandating the use of the mother tongues as media of instruction (MOI) in early primary years did not come easy. Called Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE), this recent linguistic structure of educational provision had to navigate the intricate discursive terrains of language policy-making in order to find a strategic space from which to articulate alternative and marginalized visions of education and nation-building in the country. This chapter provides a brief history of the language-in-education debates in the country, assesses the hits and misses of bilingual education, and takes stock of the arguments for and against the use of the mother tongues leading to the promulgation of a comprehensive basic education law which includes MTB-MLE. In the end, however, languages-in-education are never just about languages alone; they are about struggles for power and for contending visions of the nation. MTB-MLE promises to address different forms of inequities in Philippine society, but ideological and structural challenges against it are massive and relentless.

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Tupas, T.R.F. and Lorente, B.P. (2014). A ‘new’ politics of language in the Philippines: bilingual education and the new challenge of the mother tongues. In P. Sercombe & T.R.F. Tupas (Eds.). Language, identities and education in Southeast Asia: language contact, assimilation and shift in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore (pp. 165 - 180). Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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ENGLISH FOR ASEAN INTEGRATION: POLICIES AND PRACTICES IN THE REGION, edited by Terance W. Bigalke and Salbrina Sharbawi, Brunei: Universiti Brunei Dharussalam, 2015 (pp. 110-119)

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Martin, Isabel Pefianco. 2012. Diffusion and directions English language policy in the Philippines. In Low Ee Ling and Azirah Hashim. (eds.) English in South East Asia: Features, Policy, and Language in Use, pp. 189-205.

"This chapter presents the English language from the viewpoint of language policy. English was first introduced to the Filipinos through the American public school system and, for half a century, the language was systematically promoted as a civilizing tool. Today, beliefs and attitudes about English, as well as the various ways in which the language is used, may be traced to the Filipino experience of American colonial education. A brief survey of the English language policy situation in the Philippines from the American colonial period to contemporary times reveals diffusions in language policy formulation. Such diffusion has resulted in conflicting policies and practices that marginalize Philippine languages and contribute to the further deterioration of education among Filipino children. Keywords: language policy and planning, bilingual education, national language, English as the medium of instruction"

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The Politics of English in Asia: Language Policy and Cultural Expression in South and Southeast Asia

The grip of English in the Philippines signifies an enduring and flawed image of national development that is monocentric with an English-dominant core. It traces the trajectory of this dominance of English in the Philippines from its introduction as the de facto medium of instruction in the public school system during the American colonial era to its incorporation as the indispensable competitive edge of Filipinos in the current era of globalization. This privileged position of English in the country’s linguistic economy has been reinforced by the Filipino elite’s symbolic struggles over power in the wake of post-colonialism and the country’s structural insertion at the margins of the global economy as a source of cheap, English-speaking migrant labor. The grip of English in the country may be mitigated by the introduction of mother tongue based multilingual education (MTBLE). The framework of MTBLE appears to conceive of national development in terms of widening access to valuable material and symbolic resources such as literacy and higher levels of formal education. As the MTBLE is still in its infancy, the extent to which it can live up to its promise remains to be seen

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Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development

ABSTRACT This paper maps out the linguistic history of nation-building in the Philippines through the politics of ‘p’ and ‘f’ in the country. This politics concerns the various strategic acts of naming the national language at different periods of the country's history that have shaped its fate as the most hegemonic indigenous Philippine language. Tagalog, Pilipino and Filipino have been names given to the national language, each loaded with ideological, political and historical significance. Against English, ‘p’ was appropriated through the renaming of Tagalog as Pilipino; against all other Philippine languages, ‘f’ was institutionalized through Filipino to symbolize the multilingual nature of the national language. Thus, the machinations of ‘p’ and ‘f’ show that the national language is a story of the triumph of the Tagalog language over the vernacular languages. Filipinos have fought colonial rule for centuries, but hegemonic visions of a collective national(ist) struggle and identity have likewise exposed the country to its internal struggles over power and control.

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PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences

According to the new The K to 12 Basic Education Program implemented in the Philippines in 2013, modifications in pre-service education for aspiring teachers shall be applied to conform to the requirements of both K to 12 and its auxiliary program for the first three levels called Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) that mandates the utility of students' mother tongue(s) as medium of instruction. The agencies in charge for these modifications are the Department of Education and the Commission on Higher Education. Their task involves ensuring that the Teacher Education curriculum offered in different higher education institutions in the Philippines will meet the necessary quality standards for new teachers. However, since the implementation of MTB-MLE as a national policy in the School Year 2012-2013, no national guideline has been issued to higher education institutions regarding the said modifications. This paper locates voices of tertiary instructors employed in elementary education programs in four selected universities across the Philippines during the implementation of the MTB-MLE policy. This study specifically sought to determine the interventions applied by university administrations to their elementary education programs to ensure that their adult learners' knowledge and skills are aligned with the national policies even without direct guidelines from PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences

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International Journal of Multilingualism

This paper shall describe the bridging strategies used by Grades 3 and 4 English teachers from schools in two regions in the Philippines to help their multilingual students transition from using the mother tongue as medium of instruction in the different subject areas to using English in the English classroom. Data were obtained through interviews, classroom observations and stimulated recall. Findings revealed that the teachers utilized different translanguaging strategies like direct translation, code-switching, metalinguistic comparison-contrast and metalinguistic explanation. These strategies used the various linguistic and semiotic resources of both students and teachers as mediating tools to allow more efficient teaching and learning and more active participation from students in the language learning activities.

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