Hornberger, Nancy H

Disciplines

Anthropology
Education
Linguistics

Position

Professor

Introduction

Dr. Hornberger investigates language and education in culturally and linguistically diverse settings, using an approach which combines methods and perspectives from anthropology, linguistics, sociolinguistics, and policy studies. She gives special attention to educational policy and practice for indigenous and immigrant language groups, compared across national contexts. Her particular focus is on Quechua speaking populations in Peru and Bolivia and Cambodian and Puerto Rican populations in Philadelphia, but she also studies minority language groups in other parts of the world as well. Dr. Hornberger pursues the answers to two questions in particular in her investigations

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 38

Portraits of Three Language Activists in Indigenous Language Reclamation
(2017-09-01) Hornberger, Nancy H
In an approach inspired by portraiture and ‘history in person,’ this paper portrays three women Indigenous language activists engaged in language reclamation, highlighting the mutually constitutive nature of language and the enduring struggles of Indigenous peoples that are crucibles for forging their identities. Neri Mamani breaks down longstanding language and identity compartmentalisations in Peru by assuming a personal language policy of using Quechua and engaging in Indigenous practices in public, urban, and literate spaces. Nobuhle Hlongwa teaches a university course on language planning through isiZulu medium and is a key figure in advocating for, negotiating, and implementing multilingual language policy at her university and in South Africa. Though discouraged by the politics of language policy, Hanna Outakoski stays in the fray for the sake of Sámi language, as university teacher of Sámi, activist for Sámi at the municipal level, and researcher in a cross-national multilingual literacy assessment of Sámi youth. Though the portraits give only a glimmer of the rich and complex lives, scholarship, and commitment of the three women, they demonstrate the power of individuals in shaping language landscapes, policy, and assessment; and the implementational and ideological paths and spaces for language reclamation opened up as they do so.
Discursive Approaches to Understanding Teacher Collaboration: Policy Into Practice
(2006-01-01) Hornberger, Nancy H
Afterword: Ecology and Ideology in Multilingual Classrooms
(2003-01-01) Hornberger, Nancy H
Multilingual Education Policy and Practice: Ten Certainties (Grounded in Indigenous Experience)
(2009-04-01) Hornberger, Nancy H
Although multilingualism and multilingual education have existed for centuries, our 21st-century entrance into the new millennium has brought renewed interest and contestation around this educational alternative. Ethnolinguistic diversity and inequality, intercultural communication and contact, and global political and economic interdependence are more than ever acknowledged realities of today's world, and all of them put pressures on our educational systems. Now, as throughout history, multilingual education offers the best possibilities for preparing coming generations to participate in constructing more just and democratic societies in our globalized and intercultural world; however, it is not unproblematically achieved. There are many unanswered questions and doubts as to policy and implementation, program and curricular design, classroom instruction practices, pedagogy, and teacher professional development, but there is also much that we understand and know very well, based on empirical research in many corners of the world. Here I highlight Bolivian and other Indigenous educational experiences with which I am most familiar, and which capture certainties that hold beyond the particular instances I describe. My emphasis is on what we know and are sure of, and my goal is to convey my deep conviction that multilingual education constitutes a wide and welcoming educational doorway toward peaceful coexistence of peoples and especially restoration and empowerment of those who have been historically oppressed.
Negotiating Methodological Rich Points in the Ethnography of Language Policy
(2013-01-05) Hornberger, Nancy H
Building on Agar’s (1996: 26) notion of rich points as those times in ethnographic research when something happens that the ethnographer doesn’t understand, methodological rich points are by extension those points where our assumptions about the way research works and the conceptual tools we have for doing research are inadequate to understand the worlds we are researching. When we pay attention to those points and adjust our research practices accordingly, they become key opportunities to advance our research and our under standings. Drawing for illustrative purposes on ethnographic research on bi lingual intercultural education policy and practice in the Andes carried out by Indigenous students for their Master’s theses at the University of San Simón’s Program for Professional Development in Bilingual Intercultural Education for the Andean Region (PROEIB Andes) in Bolivia, I highlight methodological rich points as they emerge across language policy texts, discourses and practices. Framing the methodological rich points in the context of basic questions of re search methodology and ethics, I borrow as organizing rubric the paradigmatic heuristic for sociolinguistic analysis first offered by Fishman (1971: 219) and here adapted to the ethnography of language policy to ask: who researches whom and what, where, how and why?
Heritage/Community Language Education: US and Australian Perspectives
(2005-01-01) Hornberger, Nancy H.
Voice and Biliteracy in Indigenous Language Revitalization: Contentious Educational Practices in Quechua, Guarani, and Maori Contexts
(2006-01-01) Hornberger, Nancy H
This article considers instances of biliterate educational practice in contexts of indigenous language revitalization involving Quechua in the South American Andes, Guarani in Paraguay, and Maori in Aotearoa/NewZealand. In these indigenous contexts of sociohistorical and sociolinguistic oppression, the implementation of multilingual language policies through multilingual education brings with it choices, dilemmas, and even contradictions in educational practice. I consider examples of such contentious educational practices from an ecological perspective, using the continua of biliteracy and the notion of voice as analytical heuristics. I suggest that the biliterate use of indigenous children's own or heritage language as medium of instruction alongside the dominant language mediates the dialogism, meaning-making, access to wider discourses, and taking of an active stance that are dimensions of voice. Indigenous voices thus activated can be a powerful force for both enhancing the children's own learning and promoting the maintenance and revitalization of their languages.
Sámi Time, Space, and Place: Exploring Teachers’ Metapragmatic Statements on Sámi Language Use, Teaching, and Revitalization in Sápmi
(2015-01-01) Hornberger, Nancy H; Outakoski, Hanna
Late in the evening before a regular school day, the mother of a Sámi family gets a call from her husband working at the reindeer corral saying that the reindeer will be brought in for separation and round-up early in the next morning. In the morning the rest of the family will join the father and other relatives at the reindeer corral and will be working late with the reindeers that day. At school the teachers get the information about the reindeer roundup from those children that are present in the morning, or from Sámi colleagues that have also gone to the corral. That day must, for the most part, be rescheduled at very short notice. The reactions to the changes are varying amongst the staff. The time used for rescheduling and planning the rest of that school day, or the coming couple of days, is not something that any member of the staff is looking forward to, but the attitudes, frustration and values that relate to the unpredictability of everyday life and the peculiarities of this particular cultural context are experienced in many different ways.
Should Quechua Be Used in Puno's Rural Schools?
(1986-04-01) Hornberger, Nancy H
This paper speculates on the possibilities for planning for language maintenance in one particular case. It considers the pros and cons of using Quechua in schools serving Quechua-speaking communities in rural highland Puno, Peru, from the point of view of its bearing on Quechua language maintenance. The paper is based on a two-year ethnographic sociolinguistic study in two communities of Puno. The study compared uses Quechua and Spanish in the communities and their schools, one of which participated in a bilingual education project. It also compared attitudes of community members toward the two languages. The paper draws from the findings of the research in discussing two questions: Can language maintenance be planned?; and Can schools be agents for language maintenance?
Authenticity and Unification in Quechua Language Planning
(1998) Hornberger, Nancy H; King, Kendall A
With more than ten million speakers and numerous local and regional varieties, the unification and standardization of Quechua/Quichua has been a complicated, politically charged, and lengthy process. In most Andean nations, great strides have been made towards unification of the language in recent decades. However, the process is far from complete, and multiple unresolved issues remain, at both national and local levels. A frequent sticking point in the process is the concern that the authenticity of the language will be lost in the move towards unification. This paper examines the potentially problematic tension between the goals of authenticity and unification. One case examines an orthographic debate which arose in the process of establishing an official orthography for Quechua at the national level in Peru. The second case study moves to the local level and concerns two indigenous communities in Saraguro in the southern Ecuadorian highlands where Spanish predominates but two Quichua varieties co-exist. The final section considers the implications of these debates and tensions for language planning and policy.