Scotland: dispelling its identity as a 'monolingual country'?

This presentation highlights the conflict between Scotland’s Modern Foreign language education policy and practice. It points out the conservative ideological assumptions continuing to underpin the country’s primary school system, despite attempts to change them. Analysis of primary school teacher and stakeholder interviews, alongside a review of policy documents, shows that an underlying monolingual outlook persists in Scotland. Significant evidence for this persistence is an obvious overall lack of awareness of issues related to multilingual pedagogical approaches among teachers and other stakeholders, including the issues of identity, and citizenship. This is despite boldly ambitious policy statements and strong teacher commitment to Primary Modern Language learning.