Abstract:
China is a multi-ethnic and multilingual country with 56 ethnic groups and over 80 ethnic languages. By the mid-1980s, Nuosu-Mandarin bilingual education was fully implemented in urban and rural schools in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan Province. Since 2002, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has implemented language policies in education that have resulted in schools in ethnic minority areas being required to selectively provide trilingual education according to different models (Feng & Adamson, 2014). English exists in school education as a main subject in geographic areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, and Mandarin is increasingly becoming prominent in school education (Liu et al., 2015; Yang, 2017). Research on these educational policies to date has been limited to focusing on a small number of ethnic minorities. For example, the majority of research studies have focused on multilingual learners of Tibetan, Mongolian, and Uygur nationalities in China (Ma, 2015; Dong, 2015). However, there have been relatively fewer studies involving the Yi (ꆈꌠ; 彝). Previous studies of multilingual education in the Yi areas mainly focused on pedagogical improvements, the creation of teaching materials, and curriculum reform processes (Liu et al., 2015; Jing, 2016; Aga & Harrell, 2018; Zhang & Tsung, 2019), but has largely overlooked the individual challenges faced by Yi students in multilingual settings. There is also a lack of studies from the perspective of the ethnic minorities themselves. This study aims to address these gaps by exploring the challenges and impacts of Nuosu education on Yi students in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture.
Xide County, a Nuosu-speaking town in north-central Liangshan, was selected for this study. Xide is notable for its early contact with mainstream Han culture and its retention of traditional Yi culture. Fieldwork included collecting 56 language maps from Yi secondary students and conducting interviews with 3 school leaders and 12 teachers. This research examines Yi students' language maps and the teaching challenges faced by minority school teachers. This presentation explored several Yi students’ language maps and teaching challenges these minority school teachers face when teaching Yi students. Recognizing the current shortcomings and room for development of Yi education is also conducive to the effective development of education in ethnic minority areas in China. This presentation provides the current situation and dilemma of education in the Liangshan Yi region of China, so that the direction of education development of ethnic minorities can be understood in depth.
Xide County, a Nuosu-speaking town in north-central Liangshan, was selected for this study. Xide is notable for its early contact with mainstream Han culture and its retention of traditional Yi culture. Fieldwork included collecting 56 language maps from Yi secondary students and conducting interviews with 3 school leaders and 12 teachers. This research examines Yi students' language maps and the teaching challenges faced by minority school teachers. This presentation explored several Yi students’ language maps and teaching challenges these minority school teachers face when teaching Yi students. Recognizing the current shortcomings and room for development of Yi education is also conducive to the effective development of education in ethnic minority areas in China. This presentation provides the current situation and dilemma of education in the Liangshan Yi region of China, so that the direction of education development of ethnic minorities can be understood in depth.