Multilingual education in minority-dominated regions in Xinjiang, People’s Republic of China

ABSTRACT

Recent developments in multilingualism and multilingual education in minority-dominated regions in China highlight the importance of policy studies to support the national goals of achieving multilingualism [Feng, A. W., and B. Adamson, eds. 2015. Trilingualism in Education in China: Models and Challenges. Dordrecht: Springer], especially in remote western regions such as Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR) that pose geographical, socio-political, and educational challenges. This study investigates the effectiveness of language policies and the implementation of multilingual education for minority dominated regions in XUAR, and of the extent to which those policies support multilingual education. The data mainly comprise policy documents issued at the national, regional and institutional level, supplemented by interviews with policy makers at regional and local levels. The study finds that, while the policies at both national and regional levels regarding language education in China are generally supportive of multilingualism, in reality, some of the implemented practices at local school levels in XUAR are not totally consistent with the policy goals, while weak local capacity also hinders the implementation of multilingual education.

KEYWORDS:

• Language education
• language policy
• ethnic minorities
• Xinjiang
• bilingualism
• multilingualism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In government policy documents, the term ‘bilingual’ (shuangyu) is used for policies covering Putonghua and the ethnic minority languages. It is also used for policies that incorporate a third language, such as English, rather than adopting ‘multilingual’ (duoyu). For consistency, in this paper we use ‘bilingual’ in the context of policy documents on the understanding that it may be referring to multilingualism.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [ZUEL 2722020PY052 and 2722018XT018].

Notes on contributors

Ping Zhang

Ping Zhang is a lecturer of English in School of Foreign Studies at Zhongnan University of Economics and Law. Her area of research is multilingual education with a focus on minority dominated regions.

Bob Adamson

Bob Adamson is Visiting Professor in Curriculum and Comparative Education at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China. He publishes in the fields of English language teaching, teacher education, comparative education, curriculum studies and higher education.