In this thesis I analyse changes to the medium of instruction (MOI) policies of
primary and secondary schools of new states which gained independence after
the end of the Second World War up to 2015. In it I view MOI policies as drivers
of linguistic state building, with decisions to use additional languages for teaching
and learning being evaluated in terms of the threat that they may pose to the
status of official languages and established patterns of social opportunity and
status associated with knowledge of them. I develop and use an expanded
version of Bourdieu’s theory of the national linguistic market as a conceptual
framework to capture the interaction of factors both inside and outside of the state
which may influence MOI policy decisions.
The existing comparative literature consists mainly of descriptive studies of
individual states or geographical regions. My study is distinctive because it
focuses on new states and uses a large, longitudinal, sample to provide a global
perspective on the choices that new states have made about MOI policies in
primary and secondary schools and how these policies have changed. My
methodological approach is distinct, using qualitative comparative analysis
(QCA), an approach which is currently underutilized in comparative education
research, particularly in studies with a temporal component.
I develop a novel MOI typology, identifying four distinctive models: Purist (only
the state language(s) are used); Pragmatic (community languages are used in
primary schooling); Accommodating (high status community languages are used
in secondary school); and Opportunistic (new, high status, languages are
introduced as MOI). I argue that, whilst Bourdieu’s concept of linguistic markets
provides a powerful basis for understanding MOI policy decisions, the interaction
of national (internal) linguistic markets with the international (external) linguistic
market needs to be considered to fully understand patterns of MOI policy change
over time.