Umeå University's logo

Many studies have shown that Second Language (L2) Medium of Instruction (MoI) policies in Africa are linked to educational inequity, substandard teaching practice, low literacy skills and poor overall academic performance. In the light of this background, this thesis aims to make a more thorough inquiry into questions related to language-in-education policies, L2 as MoI, and academic success in the Seychelles, a small island nation in the Indian Ocean. Here the first language (L1), Kreol Seselwa, is used as MoI during the first two years of primary education and is then replaced completely, and quite abruptly, by English. While such L2 MoI policies exist in many parts of Africa, Seychelles is in many ways unique since approximately 98% of the student population all have the same L1, i.e. Kreol Seselwa. We are thus not dealing with a situation where the use of English in education is motivated by it being a lingua franca. 

The Seychelles is also the smallest and least populated country in Africa, offering an easily accessible context for linguistic exploration into matters regarding language-in-education policies. The country’s small size also enables one to gain real depth of insight into the language-in-education policy situation and the challenges faced by many nations in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). 

Using an eclectic methodological approach, including critical discourse analysis of policy documents, classroom observations, writing experiments, semi-structured interviews, survey questionnaires and corpus analysis, the thesis investigates the “problem” on various levels of the educational system (macro, meso and micro). The main focus lies on challenges and consequences of current language-in-education policies, culminating into four individual papers which include: 1) an analysis of educational policy documents such as the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) and subject syllabi; 2) an investigation the teachers’ attitudes towards teaching through English and/or Kreol Seselwa; 3) an evaluation of learners’ ability to write their subject knowledge in English and Kreol Seselwa and 4) an investigation of Primary Six pupils’ ability to make meaning through their literacy practice in English and Kreol Seselwa. 

Bernard Spolsky’s (2004) comprehensive theoretical framework of language practices, language beliefs and values, and language planning and/or management is then used as the main analytical model to analyse the results and describe how these four studies are interconnected systematically in their quest to shed light on the current language-in-education context of Seychelles.

The main findings indicate that current language-in-education policies are contributing to educational inequity, especially given that the present-day system relies heavily on written examinations. The overall conclusion is that the full potential of using the mother tongue in learning contexts is not being realised, primarily a result of deeply rooted negative attitudes towards Kreol Seselwa being used in the Seychelles educational context. 

The “language problems” in the Seychelles educational system are thereby investigated systematically and the results are highly relevant for all post-colonial contexts where L2s are used as MoIs. 

Drawing on evidence from second language medium of instruction (L2 Mol) context (the Seychelles), the objective of the study was to investigate to what extent the choice of language is a factor that influences pupils' writing and their opportunities to incorporate their own knowledge, person, experiences and world views in their school knowledge production. The evidence is based on findings from a corpus of 308 written texts, produced by 154 primary six pupils in the Seychelles in the subject of Social Studies, where each pupil answered the same task under controlled conditions in their native tongue (Kreol Seselwa) and in English (L2 Mol) in a counterbalanced design. Apart from text length, aspects of two metafunctions from Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) were investigated in the analyses, namely 1) the cognitive ideational dimension and 2) the social and interpersonal dimension. With relevance to the ideational dimension, we also looked at how students resorted to code switching to express their ideas. The results of the study show that pupils produced longer texts when writing in Kreol Seselwa and that they code switched more in the English texts. Further, the Kreol Seselwa texts contained far richer vocabulary to describe the semantic domain of the locally contextualised topic of the exercise. It was also evident that pupils used far more first-person pronouns when writing in their mother tongue, indicating a closer engagement with the text than when they wrote in English. The study has implications for policy-makers, teachers and most importantly learners in other multilingual settings, particularly in post-colonial countries like the Seychelles, where the mother tongue is undervalued in the classroom.

This paper builds on Zelime & Deutschmann, 2016, where we examined language ideologies/directives in the Ideological and Formal domains of the curriculum in a multilingual postcolonial context – the Seychelles. Our overall conclusion from this work was that there was a clear mismatch between the roles that different languages were ascribed in these two domains. In this paper we look at manifestations of the Ideological and Formal curricula in the Perceived and Operational domains of the curriculum, more specifically, the language beliefs, attitudes and classroom practices of primary school teachers. We base our findings on questionnaire answers from 142 respondents in 22 primary schools, coupled with classroom observations and teacher interviews. The Seychelles has a fairly typical postcolonial language-in-education system and follows a transitional model of medium of instruction (hereafter MoI). In this system children are taught in Kreol Seselwa (hereafter K.S.), the mother tongue of the vast majority, during the first two years of schooling after which it is replaced by English. Officially, K.S. retains its role as a “support language”, but in reality, controversies surround this practice. Our results indicate that while K.S. plays a central role in the everyday lives of the teachers, they are surprisingly negative to its role in education. The majority want to see it removed altogether and replaced by an English-only model. At the same time most teachers also acknowledge the importance of K.S. as a support language. Using a framework of postcolonial theory, we try to explain this inconsistency.

This study examines the use of Seychelles Creole (hereafter, Kreol Seselwa), and English as languages for testing knowledge in the Social Studies classroom of the Seychelles. The objective of the study was to ascertain whether the languages used in the test affected the pupils' academic performance. The paper is theoretically influenced by the Social Practice approach to writing (Street, 1984), challenging a monolingual (autonomous) approach in favour of a more multilingual (ideological) model which takes into account all the learners' language repertoires. A within groups experimental design was implemented, and 151 primary six pupils (11-12 years) from three different schools wrote a short test, in a counterbalanced design, in two languages. The topic of the test was fishing, mostly local contextual knowledge, taught in English. The tests were marked for content in both languages. The results showed that the scores on both languages highly correlated, indicating that both tests captured the same knowledge constructs. However, pupils achieved significantly higher marks in the tests written in Kreol Seselwa than in English. The study has implications for policymakers, teachers and most importantly learners in other multilingual settings, particularly in post-colonial countries like the Seychelles, where the mother tongue is undervalued in the classroom.

The policy documents of a country’s education system can provide evidence of that particular country’s vision for its people’s socio-economic, socio-cultural and academic development. Such documents can also say much about the power relations between different languages that might be represented within it. Educators, policy makers, educational leaders, teachers, learners and parents are some key players directly or indirectly affected by these policy documents. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and Spolsky’s (2004, 2012) framework for language policy analysis, this paper investigates the trilingual language-in-education policy in the Seychelles National Curriculum Framework (2013) and three Subject Curricula (English, Kreol Seselwa and French), with the aim to explore how the documents relate at the levels of policy planning, implementation and practice. Our findings reveal that there are discrepancies between the overarching Curriculum Framework, where all three national languages are given central roles and equal status, and the Subject Curricula, where clear differences in the power and functions of the languages emerge. Further, on a more pragmatic level, it is of concern that the current policy documents do not explicitly acknowledge the role of the language instruction as a vehicle for learning when describing learning goals and terminal objectives – a good understanding of English (the current L2 medium of instruction) is a prerequisite for succeeding in education. Further, the lack of attention to the question of L2 writing literacy and the fact that Seychellois students have to become fairly advanced English writers at an early age if they want to communicate their knowledge across the curriculum is particularly disconcerting.

Due to a colonial legacy, numerous nations have been struggling to find the role of indigenous languages in officialdom. In many such contexts, the ex-colonial language/s (often English) still represent the path to economic success and prestige, while local vernaculars are low in status and confined to less formal domains. In this respect, Creole languages have traditionally been particularly stigmatised.

In the following article, we will examine pupils’ (year one to nine) language attitudes towards the three national languages in the Seychelles – the mother tongue Kreol Seselwa, and the two ex-colonial languages English and French – in two schools, and explore how these attitudes compare with the general performance in the national examinations. The results show that pupils in primary school are positive towards Kreol in all four literacy skill domains, and that these positive attitudes are mirrored in the P6 national examinations. In contrast, there is a clear change in attitudes towards writing and reading in Kreol, once pupils enter the secondary level; secondary school pupils do not seem to favour Kreol as a written medium. We are also able to show that the positive attitudes pupils in primary and secondary schools also hold towards English are not reflected in exam results. English together with Mathematics are the two subjects with the lowest national average grades in the P6 examinations. Finally, our results indicate that girls hold more favourable attitudes towards all the key literacy skills in all the languages investigated, and that these attitudes are reflected in the performance in the national examinations; girls outscore boys in all the language subjects and the poor performance of boys, especially in written English, is of concern. We argue that the positive attitudes and results in Kreol in primary school should be built on in order to increase general literacy in all language subjects, and that extending the role of Kreol as an academic subject into secondary levels may help in this pursuit and raise literacy levels as well as the general status of the language. Further the findings have greater implications for language-in-education policies in post-colonial contexts, some of which are discussed below. 

En raison d'un héritage colonial, de nombreuses nations peinent à défi nir le rôle des langues autochtones au sein d'un cadre offi ciel. Dans de nombreux cas, l'ancienne/les anciennes langue(s) coloniale(s) (souvent l'anglais) représente(nt) toujours la voie de la réussite économique et du prestige, alors que les langues vernaculaires locales ont un statut peu-relevé et leur usage est limité à des domaines moins formels. Ainsi, les langues créoles ont traditionnellement été stigmatisées de façon particulière.Dans cette présente communication, nous examineronsl'attitude linguistique des apprenants (se situant à divers niveaux d'apprentissage, entre la première et la neuvième année de scolarité) envers les trois langues nationales des Seychelles, à savoir la langue maternelle, le Kreol Seselwa, et les langues de deux anciens pouvoirs coloniaux : le français et l'anglais, dans deux écoles. Nous verrons aussi comment établir un lien entre ces attitudes et la performance générale notée au cours des examens nationaux. Les résultatsdémontrent que les élèves au niveau primaire ont une attitude positive envers le Kreol dans les quatre compétences langagières et que ces attitudes positives se refl ètent au niveau des examens nationaux en P6. En revanche, il y a un net changement d'attitude envers l'écriture et la lecture en Kreol, une fois que les élèves passent au secondaire, où ils ne semblent pas favoriser le Kreol comme un support écrit. Nous sommes également en mesure de démontrer que les attitudes positives des apprenants dans les écoles primaires et secondaires envers l'anglais ne sont pas refl étées dans leurs performances académiques dans cette matière. L'anglais et les mathématiques sont les deux matières où l'on enregistre les moyennes nationales les plus faibles au niveau des examens de P6. Enfi n, nos résultats indiquent que les fi lles ont des attitudes plus favorables à l'égard de toutes les compétences langagières, toutes langues confondues, et que ces attitudes se refl ètent en termes de performance aux examens nationaux. Les fi lles obtiennent, en effet, de meilleurs résultats que les garçons dans toutes les matières se rapportant aux langues, alors que la mauvaise performance des garçons, en particulier pour l'écrit en anglais, est source de préoccupation.Nous soutenons que les attitudes et les résultats positifs par rapport au Kreol à l'école primaire devraient constituer une base pour accroître le niveau général d'alphabétisation dans toutes les langues. De plus, un prolongement du rôle du Kreol en tant que matière académique au niveau secondaire peut aider dans cette quête et augmenter en même temps l'alphabétisation, la performance, ainsi que le statut général de cette langue. En outre, les résultats de nos recherches ont des implications plus larges par rapport aux dispositions régissant la place des langues dans l'éducation, et ce, dans des contextes postcoloniaux. Certains de ces résultats sont discutés ci-dessous.

Many studies have shown that Second Language (L2) Medium of Instruction (MoI) policies in Africa are linked to educational inequity, substandard teaching practice, low literacy skills and poor overall academic performance. In the light of this background, this paper proposes a framework for making more thorough enquiries into questions related to L2 as MoI, L2 writing and academic success. The framework uses the Seychelles, a small island nation in the Indian Ocean, as its point of departure. Here the L1, Seychelles Creole, is used as MoI during the first two years of education and is then abruptly replaced by English – a practice model typical in the region. Given that primary six and secondary five national exams indicate that many learners have limited literacy skills in English, it is reasonable to postulate that current policies may contribute to educational inequity, especially given that the present-day system relies heavily on written examinations.

Taking its vantage point from a Social Practice (Street, 1984) model of literacy (Purcell-Gates, Perry & Briseño, 2011), the proposed framework approaches the “problem” from several perspectives such as curriculum questions related to L2 and L1 literacy and how/whether these live up to practical student needs; the learner perspective and how external factors may affect learners’ prerequisites to acquire adequate L2 literacy skills; teaching aspects that may affect learning; the role of L1 literacy in L2 literacy development, and sociolinguistic factors such as the status of the languages in question in society. An eclectic approach is proposed in order to shed more light on the effects of L2 MoI in the Seychelles, with the ultimate aim to provide a more informed foundation for future educational policy making. The proposed framework is highly relevant for all post-colonial contexts where L2s are used as MoIs.

De nombreuses études ont démontré que l’utilisation d’une langue seconde (L2) en tant que médium d’enseignement en Afrique conduit à des situations d’iniquité éducative, à des pratiques d’enseignement inférieures, à un faible taux d’alphabétisation, et à des performances académiques marginales. Dans un tel contexte, la présente communication formule une proposition en vue de l’établissement d’un cadre pour l’examen en profondeur des questions liées à l’utilisation de la langue seconde en tant que médium d’enseignement, à l’écriture dans une langue seconde, et au succès académique. Le cadre utilise les Seychelles, petit Etat insulaire de l’océan Indien, comme point de départ. Aux Seychelles, la langue première (L1) – le kreol seselwa – est utilisée comme médium d’enseignement pendant les deux premières années de scolarité, avant de céder la place à l’anglais de façon abrupte – un modèle de pratique courant dans la région. Etant donné que les examens nationaux au niveau de la sixième année du primaire et de la cinquième année du secondaire laissent transparaitre des compétences limitées en lecture-écriture en anglais, on peut en déduire que les politiques linguistiques actuelles peuvent contribuer à une situation d’iniquité éducative, compte tenu du fait que le système en place dépend fortement des examens écrits. Inspiré d’un modèle d’alphabétisation (Purcell-Gates, Perry & Briseño, 2011) de Pratique Sociale (Street, 1984), le cadre proposé s’attaque à la « problématique » de plusieurs angles, par exemple en considérant les aspects du curriculum qui concernent la lecture et l’écriture en langues première et seconde et en interrogeant comment/ si celles-ci répondent aux besoins des apprenants ; la perspective de l’apprenant et la façon dont les facteurs externes peuvent affecter les prérequis des apprenants en vue de l’acquisition de compétences adéquates pour la lecture et l’écriture en langue seconde ; les éléments de l’enseignement susceptibles d’affecter l’apprentissage ; le rôle de l’alphabétisation en L1 pour le développement de l’alphabétisation en L2 ; ainsi que les facteurs sociolinguistiques et le statut social des langues en question. Une approche éclectique est proposée afi n de mettre davantage en lumière les effets de la L2 en tant que médium d’enseignement aux Seychelles, avec le but ultime de construire une fondation plus solide pour l’établissement des politiques éducatives à venir. Le cadre proposé est hautement approprié pour des contextes où des L2 sont utilisé