Multilingual education across Oceania

Abstract

Maintenance bilingual education is common in Polynesian settings with long‐established political sovereignty. Recently, Melanesian countries have expanded the range of languages included in education, mainly through decentralization to more efficient village‐based provision. In 40 years of multilingual policy development Australia has embraced assertively multicultural and Asianist perspectives, exploring and reconstituting national identity. This has resulted in multilingual education practice through the teaching, supporting and examining some 100 of Australia's 300 spoken languages. Multilingual education for minority language students involves complementary first language and English sup..