Expanded Spaces for Mozambican Languages in Primary Education: Where Bottom-Up Meets Top-Down

Abstract

This article describes how 16 Mozambican languages—and counting—have been brought into primary education in Mozambique through a 2002 curriculum reform, and how they are faring in light of tensions between general aspirations for dominant languages and public demand for bilingual education. Bilingual education based on learners' home languages, as one of three optional “modalities” of the reform, has grown in popularity since piloting in the 1990s, and classroom- and community-level actors are making considerable contributions, assisted by middle-level scholars and organizations. Although official policy has not been accompanied by allocation of resources at the top, it appears that implementational spaces (Hornberger, 2005) are being filled from the stakeholder level, contributing to ownership of bilingual programs and satisfaction with promoting local languages and cultures. Given current limitations at the top and middle, the question is whether the bottom can sustain implementation.

Keywords:

• bilingual education
• bottom-up language planning
• Mozambique
• policy implementation

Notes

¹Although English has recently been introduced as a subject beginning at Grade 6, Chimbutane (2009) found no evidence during fieldwork that English was a priority for parents or communities.

²The bilingual adult literacy project used only the primary language until basic reading and writing skills were acquired, then introduced oral and written secondary language Portuguese.

³Transfer is a multidirectional process that requires time, quality input in both languages, and facilitation (Baker, 2006). Effective transfer builds on strong primary language skills, combined with secondary language (L2) instruction (Cummins, 2000). Because the L2 in these contexts is foreign to most learners, short-term exposure by teachers with limited proficiency is highly inadequate (Benson, 2009; Heugh, 2006).