Forging inclusive practice in ethnically-segregated school systems: lessons from one multiethnic, bilingual education classroom in Sri Lanka

ABSTRACT

This paper offers a perspective on bilingual education (BE) as inclusive education. Ethnolinguistically-separated schools and classrooms in Sri Lanka resulted from an enduring, mother tongue instruction policy which abetted a deeply ethnically-divided nation. More recently, Sri Lanka has experimented with a BE programme in pursuit of enriching the perceived value of the local mother tongues as well as building students’ knowledge of English as a global language. This article presents analysis of the inclusive practice of two Sri Lankan BE teachers in their attempts to advance social cohesion through bilingual education. We demonstrate the logic of practice focussing on four features of the teachers’ work: promoting interethnic relations through regular change of seating arrangements; equal delegation of responsibilities and absence of favouritism; cooperative group work in ethnically heterogeneous groups; and, promoting heteroglossic language practices or translanguaging. The positive, inclusive consequences of these practices are corroborated by focus group data gathered from students in the school. We argue that teachers have a significant role in changing the logic of practice in the classroom, and that the implicit rules teachers encode in their pedagogy can reorient exclusionary, ethnocentric identity positioning towards more inclusive, supraethnic identities.

KEYWORDS:

• Bilingual education
• Sri Lanka
• inclusive education
• supraethnic identity
• medium of instruction
• Bourdieu

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Harsha Dulari Wijesekera (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer at the Postgraduate Institute of English of the Open University of Sri Lanka. Her research interests include bilingual education, social cohesion, English language teaching, and teacher education.

Jennifer Alford (PhD) is a Senior Lecturer and co-leader of the Literacies, Language, Texts and Technologies (LLTT) research group in the Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Her research interests include pedagogic models of literacy and what they afford; how English language education policies articulate, or otherwise, notions of criticality; and how teachers understand and mobilise critical approaches to literacy education amid increasingly narrow, test-related education priorities. She is also interested in: how schools provide equitable, robust English language education programs for culturally diverse learners; intercultural capacity for teachers; and bi/multilingual education policy and practice. Her research draws on socio-cultural/critical theories and discourse analysis methods. Jennifer’s PhD thesis won the 2015 Penny McKay Memorial Award for Outstanding Thesis in Language Education, and a QUT Outstanding Thesis Award. She is the author of the forthcoming Routledge book called Critical Literacy with adolescent English language learners: Exploring policy and practice in global contexts.

Michael Guanglun Mu is a Senior Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology. His ARC-DECRA is concerned with culture, class, and resilience. Michael has a strong interest in quantitative research and sociology of education. Over the years, he has published prolifically on three areas of research: negotiating Chineseness in a diasporic context; building resilience in a (im)migration context; and developing teacher professionalism in an inclusive education context. Michael is an author of three scholarly books and has two forthcoming books. He is also the Associate Editor of the International Journal of Disability, Development, and Education; and reviews manuscript for numerous international scholarly journals. Michael was a school teacher, a lecturer at Beijing Normal University in China, and a post-doctoral scholar at the University of Calgary in Canada.

ORCID

Harsha Dulari Wijesekera http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0400-6429

Jennifer Alford http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9238-0933

Michael Guanglun Mu http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8786-0956