This volume brings together research carried out in a variety of geographic and linguistic
contexts including Africa Asia Australia Canada the Caribbean Europe and the United States
and explores efforts to incorporate linguistic diversity into education and to 'harness' this
diversity for learners' benefit. It challenges the largely anachronistic ideology that promotes
exclusive use of an educational monolingual standard variety and advocates the use in formal
education of aboriginal indigenous languages minority languages nonstandard varieties and
contact languages. The contributors examine both historical and current practices for including
linguistic diversity in education by considering specific bidialectal bilingual and
multilingual educational initiatives. The different geographical and linguistic settings
covered in the volume are linked together by a unifying theme: linguistic diversity exists all
over the world but it is very rarely utilized effectively for the benefit of students. When it
is used whether in isolated studies or through governmental initiatives the research findings
point systematically to the many educational advantages experienced by linguistically-diverse
students. This book will be of interest to teachers and language practitioners as well as to
students and scholars of language and education.
