Involvement of the Community: Issues in Language Planning

In

COLLA

Involvement of the Community in Language Planning

Involvement of the Community in Issues of Language Planning

As we did our presentations today, one of the topics that came up frequently and resignated with me was how the lack of involvement of the community in the development of language policy makes its implementation ineffective. If teachers and members of the community, the ones who have to implement the policy and the ones who will use the language selected in such policy, respectively, play a role in what needs to be addressed by the policy, and more importantly, what are the resources and institutional support needed in the implementation phase, the line -as the metaphor I used in my presentation- would not be so irregular. An interesting comment regarding this issue was the lack of democracy in language policy, illustrated as "CEO's vs. educators" or "democracy vs. control and manipulation." The administrator in the Philadelphia district believed in the research literature more than in the teachers, which makes me think of the kind of research that needs to be conducted in this area, research that demonstrates how the involvement of the community has a positive effect in the implementation of the policy.

-Carolina Bustamante