ABSTRACT
A striking aspect of voices from the classroom is their rarity. In media discourse and mainstream educational discourse, we often hear what policymakers consider good practice and whether teachers are judged to be following such guidance. But we do not often hear the voices of practitioners who are attempting new ways of relating to the students in their classrooms, and less often still the voices of students themselves. This is particularly the case with regard to issues in multilingual learning, where, as Bonacina’s chapter in this part points out, policies and practices are grounded in monolingual ideologies that silence or restrict the development of positive pedagogies. Bonacina’s work in France highlights the ‘taboo’ against the use of children’s fi rst languages in many French classrooms, in a setting where multiculturalism is negatively viewed due to state policies of assimilation. However, ‘monolingualising’ ideologies (Heller, 1995: 374) have also been widely found in education systems around the world, even if there is a rhetorical commitment to the value of multilingualism, as shown for example by Anderson, Kenner and Gregory (2008) in an examination of the ‘incoherent discourses’ adopted by UK politicians and policymakers.
