Finally Shedding the Past: Filipino Teachers Negotiate Their Identities Within a New Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education Policy Landscape

Finally Shedding the Past: Filipino Teachers Negotiate Their Identities Within a New Mother-Tongue-Based Multilingual Education Policy Landscape Diane E. Dekker Doctor of Philosophy Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Ontario Institute of Studies in Education of the University of Toronto 2016 Abstract Language issues in education raise multiple and complex challenges due to our diverse multilingual world. Choosing the most appropriate language of instruction has been a contentious debate for decades with a global drive for English prominence. Post-colonial contexts have histories of foreign language education and marginalization of local languages. UNESCO (2008) suggests that failure to address the issue of language is a persistent problem affecting completion of Education for All goals and hampering global education reform efforts. The Philippines Department of Education has initiated a language policy change from double immersion bilingual education to mother tongue-based multilingual education (MTB MLE) which for the first time validates previously marginalized languages as languages of instruction within the formal education system. Such a paradigmatic shift requires time to re-train teachers, adjust curriculum, develop first-language, or mother tongue learning materials, and cultivate social support for the policy. Such a policy change requires significantly more of teachers than just changing the language used in the classroom. In addition, teachersâ personal and professional identities are a core issue, because, as I show in the research here, identity affects both how a teacher delivers instruction, and the attitude of the teacher in the process. All in all, identity plays a crucial role in how the policy is implemented. Teacher identity, therefore, is the primary focus of this study. Teacher responses to MTB MLE in the interviews I conducted are characterized along a continuum from fear of losing highly valued English proficiency, intimidation at using previously marginalized home languages as primary languages of instruction, and joy in the new freedom to incorporate what teachers know intuitively and have learned through experience. Regardless of response to the policy, teachers commonly agree that use of the mother tongue as language of instruction produces more engaged, active, responsive and joy-filled learning. This qualitative multiple-site case study explores how Filipino educators negotiate complex and changing personal and professional identities and practices within this paradigmatic language policy change. I interviewed 36 teachers, seven principals, groups of parents and several teacher educators at each of six different school sites. I visited each school four different times which allowed time to develop respect and trust to explore more deeply the issues of teacher identity negotiation. Rich data from multiple individual interviews, focus group discussions, classroom observations and materials analyses point to the realities of multiple challenges teachers face as they learn to use the mother tongue as the primary language of instruction in the early grades. Further findings reveal that despite the complex difficulties, teachers and students alike are enjoying school more than ever because of unhampered communication through their own mother tongues. Critical interpretation of findings reveals the benefits of including Filipino educators and parents in discussions related to the dominance of English and resulting societal power relations, sociocultural discourses and language ideologies, in order to impact perspectives of and implementation of MTB MLE. Implications emanating from the study include suggestions for supporting teachers in the negotiation of their identities and reflecting on their own underlying assumptions and ideologies through critical discussions that aim to impact sociocultural discourses.

Keywords: Decolonization
Filipino
Identities
Mother Tongue
Multilingual Education
Philippines
Advisor: Gagne, Antoinette