A comparative analysis of indigenous bilingual education policy and practice in Australia and Peru

Abstract

Australia and Peru are both signatories of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which asserts that indigenous peoples have a right to an education in their own languages, and that States have an obligation to ensure this is possible. Nevertheless, despite similarities in the early histories of indigenous education and the emergence of bilingual programs in the 1970s, the current language policy situations differ greatly between the two countries. This thesis seeks to explain the different outcomes of bilingual education policies using the framework of language policy developed by Spolsky, which conceptualises language policy as a three-component system that operates within multiple domains and functions in an ecological relationship with an array of linguistic and non-linguistic factors. As such, it will examine several areas of language management, ideology, and practices, as well as the ecological context and the domains in which these components of language policy take place. In doing so, the thesis identifies areas in which the Australian policy situation must change if it is to support bilingual education for indigenous students in the future.