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English is the language of global communication, worldwide mobility, job progress, and access to new information and research. Given the numerous roles that English plays in today's society, higher education institutes (HEIs) all over the world are pursuing English-medium education. For Pakistan, however, English-medium education is a colonial legacy rather than a deliberate choice. Research suggests that English-medium education is not devoid of controversy in higher education in Pakistan; nonetheless, students have to seek English-medium education in universities to compete with the world. In fact, being committed to SDG 4.7 Education for sustainable development and global citizenship, Pakistan is supposed to educate its citizens to become global citizens, for which English-medium education is essential. Given the fact that each of the five provinces of Pakistan has a distinct culture and sub-cultures, it is important to see how Pakistani students’ attitudes to English-medium education to become global citizens are different based on their cultural identities. Therefore, the present study aims to analyze undergraduates’ attitudes toward English-medium education based on their cultural identities to become global citizens.

Under the quantitative research paradigm, the present research adopted a comparative design. One hundred and fifty undergraduates participated in the study. The data were collected using a 15-item questionnaire on a 5-point Likert scale, and it was analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 27.0.

The results of the study revealed that participants regardless of their cultural identities have positive attitudes towards English-medium education as they believe it to be a source of career development, and improvement of their language, communication, and interpersonal skills. The participants also did not see English-medium education posing any threat to traditional culture and local languages. The findings of the present study also revealed that there is no statistical difference across the different categories of cultural identity.

The findings of the present study regarding students’ attitudes toward English-medium education will have implications for policymakers and university administration. Since cultural identity does not hinder acceptance of English-medium education, students’ positive attitudes can help policymakers promote multilingualism and English-medium education for career development. However, high-quality English language programs are crucial for maximizing the benefits. Likewise, positive attitudes of students towards English-medium education in Pakistan suggest students’ openness to intercultural dialogue. Therefore, university administration can further enhance student exchange programs for transnational research and development. Likewise, the study implies that cultural identity may not hinder English-medium education implementation in developing countries provided that practical benefits like career advancement and communication skill are emphasized.

The study is unique in the sense that it analyses undergraduates’ attitudes towards English-medium education concerning students’ cultural identities and global citizenship which have not been studied previously.

This essay provides an overview of key contemporary issues researched by scholars of Language Issues in Comparative and International Education. The authors present this scholarship around three main themes: L1-based multilingual education; language revitalization and education; and the power dynamics between dominant and non-dominant languages in educational settings. Research in all three themes challenges the view of monolingualism as the norm and invites the view that all languages are resources. These perspectives are relevant to the goals of educational development, particularly to equitable access to quality schooling. Recent research examines some stakeholders’ resistance to supporting and sustaining local languages and cultural practices. While language-in-education policy change may be slow, there are promising directions in research on how educators and communities exercise agency in transforming educational institutions to support plurilingualism and intercultural understandings. Scholars highlight the ideological, pedagogical, and policy-level supports needed for sustainable development of multiple languages, literacies and learning across contexts.

This chapter briefly explores selected English and general education policy documents, curricula, and textbooks within the context of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) from a Critical Discourse Analysis perspective and examines how they have changed pre- and post-21st century. First, a policy document related to education in KSA in general (pre-21st century) is analyzed along with an English language teaching (ELT) policy document of the same period. Next, two general policy documents post-21st century are explored, followed by one related to ELT policy. Finally, one post-21st century document related to higher education is discussed. The “network of practices” within which these documents are situated are first detailed, as well as the structural order of the discourse, and some linguistic analysis of the choice of vocabulary and grammatical structures (Meyer, 2001). Issues which might be problematic to the learning and teaching identities of the students and teachers interpreting these documents are also highlighted. Finally, we consider whether the network of practices at this institution and KSA in general “needs” the problems identified in the analysis and critically reflect on the analysis.

This chapter reviews and synthesizes three major strands of recent research, alongside discipline-specific research design, from scholars of Language Issues in Comparative and International Education. The first strand is mixed methods research on the policy and practice of L1-based multilingual education programs, and their contribution to raising educational quality and addressing equity and inclusiveness worldwide. The second strand is qualitative, community-based research of educational programs aimed toward revitalization of minoritized, indigenous, and/or endangered languages. The third strand is empirical and theoretical research that seeks to document, contest, and reconceptualize the dynamics among dominant and non-dominant languages within and between international contexts. The authors explore points of synergy between studies, examine publication in the field from a meta-perspective, and suggest encouraging directions of future research, while highlighting the value of non-dominant languages as resources for education and life.

This chapter reviews successful pedagogical interventions in teaching literacy in languages of teaching and learning in the upper primary grades in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and explores how researchers and teachers decolonized classroom spaces to ensure student achievement of learning outcomes. Themes emerging from the analysis of data are biliteracy interventions, interventions in official and national languages, teacher professional development, and ecological interventions. Results of the review indicate that researchers decolonized classroom spaces by using student linguistic repertoires, evidence-based pedagogical strategies student cultural capital and engaging families and communities. The review also reveals that more research needs to be conducted on teaching and learning in upper primary grades. The linguistic diversity of LMICs provides rich contexts for more research in bilingual education and L2 acquisition which could be useful worldwide as stakeholders in the education process explore the best ways to improve learning outcomes in schools.

The teaching of reading in English is fraught with challenges that influence teachers' practices in Papua New Guinea (PNG). There are a plethora of linguistic issues regarding teaching in both the vernacular languages and English. Postcolonial education in PNG has continued to promote English as the medium of instruction while also promoting the use of vernacular and mother tongue. The outcomes-based education reform in the Language and Literacy Policy (1993–2014) supported the use of vernacular languages in the elementary years with the gradual bridging to English in Grade 3. In 2015, the Language and Literacy policy changed to standards-based education. One major shift was from the use of vernacular languages to English as a medium of instruction at all levels of formal education.

In this chapter, we use Tierney's concept of decolonizing spaces to investigate teachers' perspectives on implementing the English standards-based curriculum and the role the vernacular, mother tongue, and translanguaging plays in the classroom as Year 4 teachers grapple with the teaching of reading. It will problematize the colonization of English, the place of translanguaging, and the benefits and challenges for teachers when the classroom teacher most likely is not a native speaker of the children's dialect or English.

For education systems to meet the demands of the knowledge economy and prepare their students to be adequately skilled for a more diversified economy in the Arabian Gulf, bold and innovative initiatives must be taken in order to ensure that these skills contribute towards a sustainable knowledge economy. Gulf states have been preparing for a transition towards, what the World Bank calls ‘a knowledge economy’ (World Bank, 2013) where economies will be run by the skills and knowledge capital of their workforce with technology and its advancement playing a central role. Many governments have identified the education sector as a site in which such ambitions can be met and have therefore introduced models of education where English is the medium of instruction. The rationale behind such a decision is based on multiple reasons, mainly because English is considered by some as the language of science and discovery (see Crystal, 2003).

In all discussions surrounding the overhaul of education systems and the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) namely, goal number four (quality education), the notion of the language through which students learn is a neglected area of inquiry. English is increasingly becoming the language of instruction at the university and progressively at the school level too. This means that young students lose out on adequately learning their mother tongue. The chapter argues that only through forward, bold, and novel decisions to teach students in both Arabic and English can there be a guarantee of a more sustainable knowledge economy across the Gulf.

Three distinctive domains of inquiry in comparative and international education (CIE) point to epistemic fault lines that simultaneously enable and disable the possibilities for social transformation in the cultural ecologies that demarcate, but also entangle, the so-called Global South and the North. Historically, these domains of inquiry – language/multilingualism, education, and development – engage arenas in which ideas about wellbeing, social arrangements, and the politics of knowledge (and of power) are constantly constructed, contested, and renegotiated. This analysis pinpoints some of the discursive technologies, which guarantee that active scholarly innovations and differentiation proceed in ways that ultimately leave intact the territorialized regionalizations of development differences. It reflects on ongoing fieldwork from the South to highlight three spheres of social control, and struggle, illustrative of the coloniality of difference and the expanding institutionalization of learning (as schooling) in an era of global interventionism. These loci – the sources of knowledge traditions, the sites of its enactment, and the power of knowledge transactions – represent overlapping activation points through which education interventions both stimulate and stultify social transformations. Specifically, the sources, sites, and power of knowledge offer empirical and discursive tools for historiographic reconsideration of the role of linguistic diversity and education in social change processes, and, crucially, for shifting critical focus from merely the occidentality of contemporary education traditions to the universalism of its social imaginaries. In this critical reading of new understandings of language(s) as invention, therefore, lies analytic opportunities for rethinking epistemic dilemmas in linking education and “development” in CIE scholarship.

The history of Nepal gives some insight into its current status as a diverse and multilingual nation with more than 123 languages. Multilingualism is part of the founding philosophy of the country but since it was unified in 1768, government attitudes to language and language education have fluctuated. Though historically education in Nepal has been delivered exclusively in the Nepali language and, more recently, in English, the Government of Nepal is now committed to introducing mother tongue-based, multilingual education (MLE).

Nepal has among the lowest literacy rates in the world (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2015) and the government seeks to turn this trend around, particularly for students who do not speak Nepali as a mother tongue. The commitment to strengthening mother tongue-based MLE features prominently in the Constitution of Nepal (2015), the Act Relating to Compulsory and Free Education (2018) and the School Sector Development Plan (MOEST, 2018). This new constitution declares that “all the mother tongues spoken in Nepal shall be the national language” (2015 article 6).

Implementing these policy commitments in over 120 languages across seven provinces and 753 municipalities is the next challenge for the fledgling democracy. As a “wicked hard” policy area, doing so will require a solid understanding of local attitudes, beliefs, resources, and capacities. This chapter gives a unified review of the history, languages, ideologies, beliefs, and trends that currently influence MLE in Nepal and are likely to play a role into the future.

This chapter discusses the role of language in the transformation of two African institutions of higher education, namely the University of Botswana (in Botswana) and the University of KwaZulu-Natal (in South Africa). The transformation of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, which is aimed at addressing the inequalities and other ills of the apartheid era, has taken on board language issues. For instance, isiZulu is being developed and promoted to join English as a language of scholarship. In contrast, the University of Botswana’s transformation does not stem from a political background of oppression. The institutional transformation has to do internationalization and the conversion into a research-intensive university. This transformation, unlike at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, has not taken a strong move to develop and promote Setswana (Botswana’s national language) as a language of scholarship.