Abstract:

This study will analyze the philosophical and sociological assumptions that underlie changing language teaching policies, practices, and ideologies in the US and EU. In the EU those policies closely follow guidelines outlined in the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of References for Languages (CEFR). This study will outline the most common frameworks used for teaching English as a second language (ESL) and world languages in the US. One of these frameworks, World-class Instruction Design and Assessment (WIDA), is used in 36 out of 50 states in the US. Another common US framework that focuses on the teaching of world languages is that of the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).

According to James A. Banks (2016), immigration and the flow of refugees has increased significantly in recent years to both the EU and the US due to climate change, economic and political instability, and the rise of terrorist groups such as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Demographic changes in the United States (US) in the last four decades have caused people living there to question existing attitudes about bilingualism and multilingualism. Federal policy as outlined in the 2016 reauthorization of the Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which is entitled Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), concedes many critical decision-making powers to state educational agencies (SEAs) regarding how students are educated and assessed. This federal policy has produced significantly disparate state legislation, program models, and standardized test scores for culturally and linguistically diverse students across the US. In US schools, the students who consistently score below their white peers on standardized tests in English are often students whose native language is not English. Estimates by the US Department of Education indicate that more than five million school-age children (more than 10 percent of K-12 students) are not fluent in English (Garcia, Jensen & Scribner, 2009). These English learners (ELs) speak 350 languages, and 77 percent speak Spanish (Goldenberg, 2008).

Demographics within the current 34 countries of the EU have changed dramatically since the EU was formed after the World War II (Cini & Perez-Solorzano Borragan, 2013). Since 1990, migration among the countries of the EU has steadily increased because of new policies and the creation of the Euro as the common currency. In 2011, approximately three million people had immigrated within the 27 countries making up the EU at the time (Cini & Perez-Solorzano Borragan, 2013). The United Kingdom (UK) accounted for the largest number of immigrants (500,000) followed by Germany (490,000), and Italy (386,000). At the same time, the Spanish government estimated that 500,000 of its citizens emigrated to other countries followed by the UK (351,000), and France (213,000). The highest rates of emigration in 2011 were reported for Ireland and Lithuania which estimates that there were 19 or 18 emigrants in every group of 1,000 people respectively (Cini & Perez-Solorzano Borragan, 2013). These statistics continue to change year by year especially in the last five years during harsh economic times coupled with political upheavals. The children of immigrants in the EU are often those who fare the worst in host country schools (Nieto, 2016).

Keywords:

Global migration, demographics, educational policies, language teaching, language learning.