1st Edition

Adult Language Education and Migration Challenging agendas in policy and practice

Edited By James Simpson, Anne Whiteside Copyright 2015
    290 Pages
    by Routledge

    290 Pages
    by Routledge

    Adult Language Education and Migration: Challenging Agendas in Policy and Practice provides a lively and critical examination of policy and practice in language education for adult migrants around the world, showing how opportunities for learning the language of a new country both shape and are shaped by policy moves. Language policies for migrants are often controversial and hotly contested, but at the same time innovative teaching practices are emerging in response to the language learning needs of today’s mobile populations.

    This book:

    • analyses and challenges language education policies relating to adult migrants in nine countries;
    • provides a comparative study with separate chapters on policy and practice in each country;
    • focuses on Australia, Canada, Spain (Catalonia), Finland, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, the UK and the US.

    Adult Language Education and Migration is essential reading for practitioners, students and researchers working in the area of language education in migration contexts.

    Introduction
    James Simpson and Anne Whiteside

    1. Shaping Australian policy for Australian adult migrant English language learning
    Howard Nicholas

    2. Connecting with community: Helping immigrant low literacy ESL learners in local contexts
    Laura Chapman and Alan Williams

    3. French language education policy for adult migrants in Québec
    Paula Bouffard

    4. Justice-oriented citizenship in Canadian ESL classes: The views of experienced teachers
    Douglas Fleming

    5. Language education for adult migrants in Catalonia: Nation-state ambitions without nation-state resources
    Albert Branchadell

    6. A multilingual, collaborative and functional approach to nongovernment Catalan classes
    Maria Rosa Garrido and Xavier Oliva

    7. Integration policies and adult second language learning in Finland
    Sari Pöyhönen and Mirja Tarnanen

    8. A Capable Parent project - stay-at-home mothers learning Finnish
    Minna Intke-Hernandez

    9. Language training for adult migrants in France: History, policies and institutions
    Hervé Adami

    10. Plurilingual literacy practices in a creative writing workshop with adult second language learners
    Noëlle Mathis

    11. English, everywhere and nowhere: ESOL policies in Ireland
    Vera Sheridan

    12. Getting to grips with the English language
    Sandra Doyle

    13. The shifting landscape of Dutch integration policy: From L1 literacy teaching to literacy in Dutch as entrance criterion
    Jeanne Kurvers and Massimiliano Spotti

    14. ICT-based applications for civic integration in The Netherlands: Policy drivers and limits in practice
    Massimiliano Spotti and Jeanne Kurvers

    15. English language learning for adult migrants in superdiverse Britain
    James Simpson

    16. Whose Integration? A participatory ESOL project in the UK
    Melanie Cooke, Becky Winstanley, and Dermot Bryers

    17. Green Card English: New possibilities and enduring challenges In US immigration reform
    Heide Wrigley

    18. Educational programming for low-literate adult migrants in the US
    Marguerite Lukes and John Lyons

    Afterword
    Marilyn Martin-Jones

    Index

    Biography

    James Simpson is a senior lecturer in language education at the School of Education, University of Leeds, UK.

    Anne Whiteside is a lecturer in a Masters in TESOL program at San Francisco State University.

    "Language education for migrants is of critical importance for the promotion of individual life chances and community development. The eighteen substantive chapters in this volume, together with the thoughtful Introduction and Afterword, provide expert accounts of policy dispositions and realities on the ground. This book is a must for anyone interested in language education, language policy and social integration."
    Constant Leung, King’s College London, UK

     

    "Adult Language Education and Migration brings together an unprecedented collection of chapters from nine different countries with very unique political and policy backdrops. Readers will find wisdom, optimism, innovation, complexity, and a fresh critical eye among the chapters of this book. Simpson and Whiteside have given us a must-read for educators and researchers working in the dynamic and politically shifting spaces in which adult language learning and migration intersect."
    Martha Bigelow, University of Minnesota, USA