Language Policy, Ideology and Educational Practices in a Globalised World

Book excerpt: The challenges posed by globalization for languages, policies and education form the basis of this collection of selected doubly-blind peer-reviewed articles, which have been put together following the 2014 PLIDAM conference on “Policies and Ideologies in Language Teaching: Actors and discourses”. The chapters collected in this volume revolve around the topic of globalization, which we understand to be a blend of ideas covered by at least four meanings: (1) internationalization, in reference to the growing interdependence and transactions between countries; (2) liberalization, which has to do with the forming of an ‘open’ and ‘borderless’ world economy; (3) universalization of certain phenomena around the world; and (4) westernization, with an emphasis on the influence of Western values (gender equality, freedom of speech and other ideas inspired by the West) over the rest of the world. The four broad themes that the chapters are organised into are (I) Policies in Language Teaching and Learning; (II) Language Policy, Ideology and Minority Languages; (III) Language Teaching and Learning across Cultures; (IV) Language Teaching and Learning with Technology. Contributing to the knowledge, discussion and debate about the impact that globalization has had on languages, policies and education in a wide variety of contexts, we hope that this book will be useful and informative to language researchers, policy makers and anyone with an interest in the intersecting field between languages, policies and education.