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Switching to Mother Tongue-Based Education: The New Trend and Its Challenges



Author(s)

Safary Wa-Mbaleka

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DOI:10.17265/1539-8080/2015.04.005

University of Phoenix, Arizona, USA

The new millennium began with a strong hope for success through collaboration in globalization. People were told that globalization would bring a significant boost in transportation, communication, and information, which would contribute to the foundation of the “global village”. Many predictions came true. One new trend was evident to support all the new innovations—most leaders wanted to integrate English in their own educational system. Around the world, schools promoted English in order to meet the competitive market that globalization had created. In fact, some linguists predicted that English was going to take over other languages, and that it could actually take some indigenous languages to their eternal rest. Today, there is a new trend that shows more and more countries promoting mother tongue-based education (MTBE). Due to the fact that this is a fairly new paradigm shift, it is catching a lot of government and educational leaders off-guard. Based on careful survey of a number of countries promoting mother tongue education and recent research studies on MTBE, this presentation synthesizes common factors that either promote or hinder MTBE. It concludes with recommendations of what must be in place for success to happen when switching to MTBE, especially in the Asian context.

Philippines, research synthesis, mother tongue-based education, MLB-MLE, English, Southeast Asia