ABSTRACT
Our contribution to this volume focuses on Wales, specifically on the social and political processes involved in the development of Welsh-medium1
and bilingual education and on contemporary debates about the nature and extent of this hard-won educational provision. Our purpose is to draw attention to the complexity of attempts to change and develop educational provision in bilingual and multilingual settings and to consider the impact of such changes on bilingual teachers and on the different groups of learners with whom they are working. In keeping with the broad aims of this volume, we also emphasise the need to understand educational language choices and the policy decisions that are taken at national, regional, or even school level, with reference to the specific social, demographic, political, and economic processes at work in those contexts.
