Sevda Erdogan, Rasit Celik

ABSTRACT

The close relationship between democracy and multilingualism has been at the hearth of discussion worldwide on education reforms. The significance of linguistic issues in education for democracy has been a concern mostly in multilingual societies. Moreover, considering that contemporary democracies are inevitably pluralistic in nature (Rawls, 1993), it is not surprising that some societal issues such as toleration, equality, mutual understanding, and positive interaction in the context of education have become more of a concern for policy makers (Çelik, 2016). Thus, multilingual education plays an important role in democratic education as it may also be seen as respecting otherness and developing intercultural perspective, when it is taken into consideration that democracy is more than a form of government and intrinsically associated with education (Dewey, 2007). Today, increasingly, countries such as Canada and Australia where immigrants are in the minority are aware of the necessity of adaption to linguistic diversity and taking into account those citizens belonging to linguistic minorities (Dagenaisi 2013; Clyne and Jupp, 2011). In these countries research has been widely conducted, a number of legislations has passed and modulated throughout the years. In this regard, multicultural education has been of a great concern for many countries recently (Gelunas, 2015). Despite such attempts, debates on the issue still continues. In this study, some of the challenges, gaps and omission that occur in trying to reconcile the tension between democracy and multilingualism in the context of education are pinpointed and the need for educational policies addressing these issues are discussed.

Keywords

Multilingual education; multiculturalism; democracy; education policy; plurality

References

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