ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the fields of educational policy studies and language in education planning. It sets out a sociological approach to the formation of educational research and policy in multilingual societies. Educational policies are bids to regulate and govern flows of discourse, fiscal capital, physical and human resources across the time/space boundaries of educational systems. Policies and policy makers set out to achieve estimable educational and cultural, social and economic goals and outcomes. The perennial questions of literacy education are only subordinately about method. A common stock of literate practices has been crucial for the building of national culture and identity, universal print literacy has been a widely documented precursor for the expansion, distribution and consolidation of capital, though obviously not in equitable ways. In multilingual societies, specific modes and genres of linguistic and literate practice constitute forms of cultural capital with variable and field-specific exchange value.
