ABSTRACT
The diverse cases in this book place educators at the epicenter of the dynamic process of language policymaking, highlighting how they time and again act upon their agency to change the various language education policies they must translate into practice. We have seen how educators “stir the onion” by creating ideological and implementational spaces for multilingualism within their own practices, even in highly centralized contexts and educational systems that assert great control over educators and their languaging. We have also seen how educators can close off those spaces. At times educators’ sense-making is directed by their prior experiences or personal identity, as individual cognitive forces shape their interpretations and enactment of language policies. At other times, it is instead external or situational forces that motivate educators’ decisions and the policies they ultimately enact. As we have stated, variations in policy implementation are not a problem that should be avoided, particularly when policies hold the potential to marginalize language minorities. Instead, we simply need to gain deeper understandings of this variation to help educators negotiate this complex terrain when faced with their own policy decisions and to help policymakers who are working from outside of classrooms create policies that assume and allow for such variances.
