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Eureka Mokibelo, Susan Akinkurolere, Admire Mhindu
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DOI:10.17265/2161-623X/2024.11.006
University of Botswana, Gaborone, Botswana
The incorporation of additional indigenous languages into the primary school curriculum in multilingual societies creates both opportunities and challenges, with far-reaching ramifications for educational policy, pedagogical techniques, and sociocultural identities. This review examines the indigenous languages’ situations to identify implementation challenges at the primary education level in Botswana, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe. Also, the complexities of extra-indigenous languages in language policies in selected countries are considered in the discussion of the challenges through a wide range of opinions and perceptions. It is argued that the need to harness beyond educational benefits of indigenous language inclusion leads to sociocultural benefits of social cohesiveness, cultural preservation, and identity building among pupils. The main challenges associated with indigenous languages, at the primary school level, in the three countries, are policy inertia, resource limitations, weak parental support, high school drop-out, cultural misfit, and societal attitudes. This paper advocates for comprehensive and maximal utilization of indigenous language inclusion benefits in primary education; and alternative and adequate arrangements for pupils whose home languages differ from indigenous languages in primary education. If building more democratic and inclusive educational systems in Botswana, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe is a concern, all hands must be on the deck to cater for different languages and cultures. The paper, further, provides insights, based on Critical Theory, into how language-in-education policies in primary schools could be addressed and resolved to harness the benefits of multilingualism and linguistic diversity.
indigenous languages, primary education, language policy, pedagogical approaches, primary education, sociocultural/socio-economic implications
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