Article Response 2
Shen WANG
Open summary:
The paper “De facto language education policy through teachers’ attitudes and practices: a critical
ethnographic study in three Jamaican schools” investigates the challenges of language education policy
(LEP) development and application from theoretical and practical perspectives in English-lexified Creole
contexts where “official recognition of the mass vernacular is absent and politically contentious; standard
language ideology is pervasive; language boundaries are blurred; linguistic selfidentification does not
match actual language use; and language attitudes are deeply entrenched and contradictory.” (Nero, 2014)
After collecting and analyzing the data from critical ethnographic study (observations of six teachers over 9
months, interviews, demographic questionnaires, and curricular documents), the author found that (1)
teachers’ conflicting attitudes towards JC created implicit policies (2) language teaching was heavily
influenced by national examinations (3) A de facto LEP was created within the linguicist ideology of a Creole
environment. Teachers were likely to resist or appropriate the dominant linguicist ideologies in a
Creole-speaking environment in response to the actual usage of vernacular in classrooms and a more
complicated agentive dimension to Shohamy’s framework occurred linking ideologies to LEP through
institutional structures.
Critique:
Introduction
In the introduction part, the author initiates with the background that the persistent academic
underachievement among Creole-dominant speakers and introduces the background of the language
education policy (LEP) development and implementation in English-lexified Creole contexts. Then the gap in
English education has been identified as the investigation of LEP in English-based Creole-speaking contexts,
followed by the significance of this study to address above lacuna by “enhancing the knowledge base on
language education policy (LEP) and practices in schools in one Creole-speaking country—Jamaica”. After
finding the gap, the author clearly describes the problem of this article to “understand the complexity of
LEP development and implementation in Creole contexts such as Jamaica where official recognition of the
mass vernacular is absent and politically contentious; standard language ideology is pervasive; language
boundaries are blurred; linguistic self-identification does not match actual language use; and language
attitudes are deeply entrenched and contradictory.” Furthermore, the rationale for this study has been
provided, which is “a critical ethnography of its implementation in three Jamaican schools”. (Nero, 2014)
In my view, the structure of the introduction part is very clear, including the background, significance of the
study and also the topic and rationale of the study.
Literature review
There are four main areas discussed in the literature review part, such as overview of research on language
education policy, policy initiatives for speakers of nonstandard varieties of English and Creoles, the
Jamaican context and language education policy in Jamaica, which are clearly connected with the overall
purpose of this study to investigate the challenge of LEP development and implementation in
English-lexified Creole contexts from theoretical and practical perspectives. The literature review is
organized to continue with a long tradition in the field but applied in new way. Specifically, the author
initially describes the overview of research on language education policy in which the past studies on
language policy (LP) and LEP have been introduces. And the author ends this overview by expressing that
this paper would focus on the complex process from policymaking to interpretation and actual practice in
English-lexified Creole contexts, which is related to the overall thesis. After that, policy initiatives for
speakers of nonstandard varieties of English and Creoles has been illustrated, in which historical researches
on policies addressing nonstandard English speakers with respect to speakers of African American
Vernacular English (AAVE) from different views have been discussed, ending with “Jamaica is a poignant
example of this” to make a transition to the next area “The Jamaican context”. Next area “The Jamaican
context” includes the information of stratified education and the controversy of Jamaican Creole (JC) and
Standard Jamaican English (SJE). The last area in this part is language education policy in Jamaica, in which
the historical policies towards language education in Jamaica have been discussed and the draft LEP as a
tool to help uncover teachers’ ideologies towards language education in a Creole-speaking environment
has been presented.
Methods and research design
The structure of methodology part of this research is very clear. Three research questions are clearly stated
at the beginning, which closely fit the literature reviewed earlier, such as the draft LEP. Then the author
illustrates the reason for choosing critical ethnographic approach and his/her stance, followed by the setting
of this study. This research was conducted at three different types of Jamaican public schools during the
2011–2012 academic year, which has been shown in Table 1 and 2. There are thirty participants for this
study including LEP developers, principals, teachers and students. And the procedure of this study is
presented in the data collection part, including observation, questionnaire, interviews, English Language
Arts (ELA) curriculum and textbooks documents. As far as I am concerned, although the different methods
in this critical ethnographic study have been shown, there are no specific procedure to describe what had
been done initially and what had been done next. Besides, the materials used, such as ELA curriculum and
textbooks have not been clearly described, maybe due to the limitations of space. The steps and ways to
analyze the data are demonstrated clearly: (1) data were separated by research question (2) data were
coded for emerging themes using Nvivo 9 (3) cross-case analyses.
Findings and discussion
The structure of the finding part is arranged according to the research questions. The first part “Teachers’
understanding of the ministry of education’s draft LEP” illustrates the finding that teachers hold the
consensus that “Jamaica is a bilingual country while maintaining SJE as the official language and the target
language of schooling” (Nero, 2014) by citing the excerpts in the interviews, which has addressed the first
research question. The next part addresses the second research question by using the excerpts in
interviews and examples in observations to get the finding that teachers’ attitudes toward language (JC and
SJE) are diverse. The third research question is addressed through the comparison shown in table 3 and
examples in discourses and observation to gain the finding that (1) teachers often switched from SJE to JC
except for Mr. J (2) different schools enacted different language and literacy practices according to the
curriculum to satisfy the different needs of their respective populations and school goals (3) “the
examination-driven curriculum privileged writing as form rather than a meaning making activity”. (Nero,
2014)
Based off the findings in the above part, the discussion part presents three in-depth findings: (1) teachers’
conflicting attitudes towards JC created implicit policies (2) language teaching was heavily influenced by
national examinations (3) A de facto LEP was created within the linguicist ideology of a Creole environment.
In this study the voice of the participants is clear, because the author tries to be nonchalant during the
interview to let the interviewees to express their language vividly, which is very useful to gain the authentic
results of the research. And the participants and their ideas were also treated ethically and responsibly, due
to the change of their names in the report and the allowance of their different views.
Conclusion
The conclusion part is very brief. It initiates with the general aim of this study to gain greater understanding
of the language education policies and practices in a Creole-speaking environment. Then the key themes
have been highlighted based on the above analysis in finding and discussion part: the de facto LEP in
Jamaican context shows “dynamic interplay of teacher agency (revealed in their language attitudes,
practices, and strategies of resistance and appropriation), structures, and ideologies, constantly bumping
against actual language use resulting from a colonial history.” (Nero, 2014) At the end of this article, some
applications have been raised to make contribution to the ratification of the Jamaican draft LEP in the
future. However, the limitations and the avenues for future research have not been identified in this article,
which I think should be included if possible to make the study more reliable.
My reflection:
This paper calls on my awareness of the variations of language in classrooms. Nowadays, with the
globalization in the world, the language classrooms become more pluralistic. Students may come from
different countries or from different socioeconomic classes. As the language teachers, I think we should
respect their culture and languages. As for the language education policy of the diverse classrooms, I hold
the view that teachers should obey the principles in the curriculum to promote the standard language in
classrooms. However, at the same time, teacher should also respect the variety of standard language.
Besides, from this paper, I also find that critical ethnographic study is suitable to investigate the
classroom-based language policy research, which could provide a relatively objective, authentic and
reliable results in a relative long period by including different kinds of research methods, like observation,
questionnaire, interview and archival or textual analysis.
Reference:
Nero, S. J. (2014). De facto language education policy through teachers' attitudes and practices: A critical ethnographic
study in three Jamaican schools. Language Policy, 13, 221-242.