Expanded Spaces for Mozambican Languages in Primary Education: Where Bottom-Up Meets Top-Down

Abstract

This article describes how 16 Mozambican languages—and counting—have been brought into primary education in Mozambique through a 2002 curriculum reform, and how they are faring in light of tensions between general aspirations for dominant languages and public demand for bilingual education. Bilingual education based on learners' home languages, as one of three optional “modalities” of the reform, has grown in popularity since piloting in the 1990s, and classroom- and community-level actors are making considerable contributions, assisted by middle-level scholars and organizations. Although official policy has not been accompanied by allocation of resources at the top, it appears that implementational spaces (Hornberger, 2005) are being filled from the stakeholder level, contributing to ownership of bilingual programs and satisfaction with promoting local languages and cultures. Given current limitations at the top and middle, the question is whether the bottom can sustain implementation.

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