Chapter 5: Inclusive Education Across the School Curriculum: Providing Greater Access Through Language

This chapter explores language diversity and the impact on student learning across the curriculum in Caribbean classrooms. I argue that, historically, concerns about language education policies in the Caribbean have largely focused on the choice of language alternatives for the education of learners, appropriate educational approaches, strategies and methods to teach a Standard language, and the impact of negative attitudes to school children’s native language. Here, I extend the discussion to examine, more specifically, issues related to language diversity and factors that can impact on student learning across disciplines in the school curriculum. As Nero and Ahamad (2014) observe, language is an essential component of a child’s educational experience. Hence, failure to define a positive role for the vernacular languages of the majority of children to facilitate learning from their earliest level of schooling results in pedagogical practices of language exclusion and a resulting negative impact on learning across the curriculum.