research article rethinking foreign language education in

Research ArticleRethinking Foreign Language Education in Tunisian Preschools

Mohamed Ridha Ben Maad

Higher Institute for Childhood Education, University of Carthage, 26 Avenue Taıeb Mhiri, Carthage Dermech, 2016 Tunis, Tunisia

Correspondence should be addressed to Mohamed Ridha Ben Maad; [email protected]

Received 14 May 2014; Revised 13 August 2014; Accepted 13 August 2014; Published 26 August 2014

Academic Editor: Phillip J. Belfiore

Copyright © 2014 Mohamed Ridha Ben Maad. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons AttributionLicense, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properlycited.

Since its institutionalization three decades ago, early childhood educator training in Tunisia has been a considerable tributary ofmainstream education. Despite such bearing, this field does not yet seem to reach the expected evolution as evidenced by the lack ofa guiding vision. A case in point that attests to this state of clarity is foreign language education which has not expediently addressedthe needs of both educators and preschoolers.This paper underscores this overlooked strand of early childhood education. Buildingon an appraisal of the problems and challenges burdening this area of education, it suggests the awakening-to-languages approachas an alternative project that maps the future course of foreign language education. Possible related benefits will consist in (i)investing in identity building, (ii) fostering critical thinking, and (iii) developing metalinguistic awareness where young learnersact according to a pedagogy of discovery and reflection rather than skill-based attainment.

1. Introduction

Early childhood education (ECE) has received noteworthyconsideration by policy makers in Tunisia. One case in pointthat attests to such interest is the establishment of the HigherInstitute for Childhood Education in 1989 which is primarilyconcerned with training future specialists in young children’seducation. This paper is largely inspired by my five-yearteaching experience within this institution which stands asthe chief tributary of ECE experts in the country, whosegraduates have been occupying vocations in governmentaland private institutions concerned with childhood welfare.Considering an exhaustive examination of the curricularchoices and professional forums under the guardianship ofthis institution and the successive governmental bodies incharge of ECE, there is some reason to assert that there hasbeen an absence of a vision which outlines a coherent policybased on clear objectives together with the unavailability of aguide that schematizes the projected ECE educator’s profile.This in fact reflects the peculiarity of this educational bodyas a composite of feeder disciplines that have not, perhaps,reached the requisite maturity to hammer out a unifyingvision exclusively premised on the assertion that the child

is a project. In order to accomplish that project, educationaleffort should observe the key elements of its constructionstarting from clear objectives setting, through syllabus designand implementation, to evaluation.

Upon askingECE students on a regularway during classesabout what constitutes their vision of and/or the agendathey ought to pursue as future practitioners, it follows thatinconsistency and uncertainty are the common denominatoramong them. At this juncture, it is unreasonable to allotfull responsibility onto the ECE policy makers within theinstitution and elsewhere as efforts in this respect are notlacking. (The official website of The Higher Institute forChildhood Education displays a “pedagogical guide” that isbased on a needs-analysis perspective.The guide comprises alist of recommendations for ECE training which have neverbeen implemented or at least broached during curricularreforms or revisions (see http://www.iscenf.rnu.tn/fr/wp-content/uploads/guide/index.html).) The problem appearsthen to be communicative seeing no willingness by ECEfaculty to raise students’ awareness about the necessity todevelop a judicious understanding of their professional raisond’etre. The picture arising from this lack of vision, and,therefore, template of objectives, is marked by a dominant

Hindawi Publishing CorporationEducation Research InternationalVolume 2014, Article ID 538437, 9 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/538437

2 Education Research International

discourse of incoherence. It is hence no surprise discern-ing a collage of individualistic training practices basicallyinformed by teacher biases. Instructional booklets are there-fore partially designed in keeping with the faculty’s academicfields of interest rather than in accordance with an abiding,predetermined frame of reference (i.e., a vision).

The discourse of incoherence in my understanding isrooted in the intuitive policy of recruiting ECE faculty and thelack of a concerted definition of the projected ECE educatorprofile. On one hand, the hiring of ECE faculty is fundamen-tally decided according to the needs of the department(s)and the courses suggested in the curriculum. This gap-fillingmethod recommends the position needed to the Ministry ofHigher Education which in turn appoints a recruitment jurymade up of a number of academicians hardly knowledgeableabout ECE as a discipline per se. They rely on generic criteriato decide someone’s eligibility for the intended positionand that includes how advanced one has been in his/herresearch course in fulfillment of a doctoral program (e.g.,sociology, psychology, linguistics, etc.), and not due to one’scontribution and/or projects attendant to the vocation. Onthe other hand, the discourse of incoherence is reflected inthe prevailing market-oriented view of the projected ECEgraduates. There is a prevailing tendency to envisage theirtraining according to the vocational needs determined by thejob market. Therefore, their profile appears more of a bundleof skill sets purported to fulfill these external needs instead ofbeing seen as projects that grow in competence and maturityaround the master project that is the child.

2. The Case of Foreign Languages in ECE

The status of foreign language (FL) education, being anessential part of ECE, seems to reflect such discourse of inco-herence, particularly through the opacity over what and howto teach. As for the part concerned with the subject matter ofFL education, the conceptualization of language(s) is much aquestion of a system to bemastered. Residues of structuralismseem to be still anchored in FL practitioners’ subconscious. Inorder to pursue their goals, educators encourage children touse a facts-oriented approach focusing mainly on the areas ofgrammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary.This image concurswithGeorgiou’s [1] assertion that “foreign language education(FLE) tends to focus on linguistic competence and when itchooses to deal with culture teaching, it commonly adopts afacts-oriented approach which is criticized as inadequate asit represents the risk of creating and reinforcing stereotypes”(p. 1). To such disproportionate predilection for form, hardlyany focus has been allayed to culture. The bottom line ofall of this is that we are stripping the FL in focus fromits cultural substance. Equally responsible for this view oflanguage is the socioeconomic pressure originating fromparents’ aspiration to have their children master languages,such as English and French, as tools to meet the challenges ofthe 21st century. Evidence for such pressure is clear throughtheir increasing interest in enrolling their children in privatepreschools which offer FL programs as early as to three-year-olds.

FL teaching practices, respectively, align with this dis-course of incoherence in the absence of a clear ECE vision.As our educational legacy endorses a culture of excellencewhich aims to spawn generations of achievers at the expenseof personality building and balanced selves, pedagogical pri-ority is fully focused on how to “perfect” and streamline theprocess of acquiring a given language.This explains to a largeextent the tendency to enroll children in private schools thatoffer them better opportunities to learn languages, as in thecase of English, at an earlier age compared with public schoolprograms. Form-focused FL teaching, obviously thriving inthis frame of mind, is another form of “banking education”where educators are responsible for depositing the A to Z of aparticular language to children who act as “depositaries” [2].In keeping with this technicist spirit of excellence, educatorsare in a relentless quest of the “best” teaching methodologyand the most effective teaching materials (e.g., the extracur-ricular support offered by lucrative businesses) to guaranteethe highest achievement levels possible.

The problem of FL learning in ECE has not been yettreated as an independent academic discipline in Tunisia inthe sense that educators do not receive quality training onproviding a specialized and focused training. This is far frombeing possible for two reasons. Firstly, scholarship interestedin FL learning together with the businesses behind sponsor-ing them garnered their focus on age categories where youngchildren are not part of. With a closer glance at the contentof the materials available worldwide, one can readily assumethat the learner subjects are stratified according to theirproficiency levels, reflecting a completely product-orientedview that envisages FL learning as an echelon-ascendingmovement rather than a course of development. Secondly,future ECE practitioners are not selected for any particularskill sets, say their aptitude for languages. It is hence tooambitious to attach great expectations about their ability torespond to any form of training. Again, it is the lack of aclear vision about FL learning that is self-imposing througha key question: do we really need to teach FLs to children?If not, in view of the limitations of FL teaching policy inECE mentioned above, a serious revision is recommended toseek other alternative loops for a purposeful FL initiation inECE.

The principled revisions should be based on a clear visionanchored in a culturally pluralistic world. Commensuratewith this vision is (global) citizenship education that has beenprevailing worldwide, but yet overlooked by both Tunisianscholars and practitioners. The educational policies andcurricular decisions here have been compliantly responsive tothe market forces based on values of productivity, efficiency,and so forth. It is no surprise then that FL education,notably the learning of English, reflects a market-mindedview of language as a product/tool to survive the challengesof modernity. However, the 21st century’s educational creedhas witnessed a paradigm shift worldwide where focus isnow on global citizenship which, according to Hosack ([3]:126), helps young children to “develop the values, knowledge,and skills that will enable them to participate in socialand political life as responsible citizens.” The awakening-to-languages approach is part of this movement.

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3. The Awakening-to-Languages Approach

By way of definition, there is solid consensus over themeaning of the awakening-to-languages (AL) approach (see[4]). The AL approach is originally conceived to prepareyoung children to live in linguistically and culturally plu-ralistic societies. Pedagogically wise, this is made possiblethrough exposing young school learners (i.e., preschoolersand earlier school graders) to audio and visual materials froma variety of languages and language varieties, such as officialschool languages (French and English), national languages(e.g., Italian in Italy), indigenous languages, and migrantlanguages (e.g., Berber and modern standard Arabic relatedto some ethnic minorities in France and Belgium). Studentsusing such materials are encouraged to perform activities ofdiscovery in order to explore and compare linguistic/culturaldifferences in an environment of amusement. The primaryrole of FL practitioners is to initiate rather than to teachsuch languages where the ultimate objective is to promoteawareness rather than acquisition.

3.1. An Overview. The AL approach is historically rooted inthe language awareness movement that appeared in GreatBritain, precisely through the pioneering work of Hawkins[5] in which he highlighted the importance of being awareof/exposed to several languages to facilitate learning foreignlanguages. Lourenco and Andrade’s ([6]: 2) definition bestillustrates Hawkins’ view of the AL approach “as a way tomake monolingual pupils step outside their mother tongue,freeing them from ‘linguistic parochialism’ and allowingthem to recognise the validity of languages other than theirown.” The main argument of Eric Hawkins concerning thisapproach consists in his differentiation between the conceptsof multilingualism and pluralism. As multilingualism standsfor learners who know a set of languages as independentcompetences, pluralism implies that learners cultivate aplurilingual and a pluricultural competence premised on theinteraction between languages that they learn or experience.Some scholars refer to it as the “fifth skill” [7] being separatefromother competences andmost notably from the “commu-nicative competence” that has shaped the frame of mind of awhole generation of FL professionals under the umbrella ofthe communicative language teaching. Pluralism should betreated henceforth as the ultimate objective of FL education,especially for beginner learners. It should accordingly qualifyas complementary to multilingualism which had been themain standpoint of FL practitioners.

It is worth noting that the assertions developed inHawkins [5] in support of the AL approach were inspired byBritish school reports that outlined the gap between studentswith andwithout adequate preliminary communication skillsand intercultural awareness. The schools surveyed showedcommon failure to give the latter additional assistance.According to Hawkins’ proponents, the AL approach canthus stand as a back-up strategy to consolidate the edu-cation of monolingual children through and for diversity.Such recommendations later inspired many FL theorists intoadvancing refined versions all centered on the identificationand promotion of intercultural competence (e.g., see [8]).

Despite some wide disagreement over a standard definitionof this concept, most of the related research endeavors concuron adopting pluralism as their guiding spirit. Their mottois as follows: children need to experience rather than learnlanguages in ECE education.

3.2.TheEuropeanExperience. Although the ideas ofHawkinsdid not resonate adequately among British policy makersconcerned with FL education, it has received considerableappeal in the European circles. Traces of the AL approachare evident in one of the guiding documents released by theCouncil of Europe, namely,A Common European Frameworkof Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment,issued in 2001. According to Fidler [9], this document servesas a “modern bible” for all those engaged in FL educationfrom curriculumdesigners, language teachers, and test devel-opers. The document champions pluralism as an ultimateobjective to attain, and so education has the obligation to“equip all Europeans for the challenges of the intensifiedinternational mobility (and) to promote mutual understand-ing and tolerance, respect for identities and cultural diversity”(p. 346). The choice is indeed politically driven knowing thatEuropean cities have been growing into multicultural sites ofa heterogeneous fabric. FL education, adopting pluralism asa frame of mind and the AL approach as its modus operandi,represents an exceptional part of this project which seeks topromote the intrinsic values of diversity and tolerance.

The interest of European research circles in the ALapproach was palpable through the emergence of manygovernment-sponsored projects throughout many cities inthe 2000s. Several projects, such as Evlang, FREPA, andJaLing, which were conducted by Michel Candelier andhis associates, focused on young age groups (i.e., a rangebetween 3 and 12 years old). They managed to amass bulksof materials, administered activities, provided personalizedtraining to educators, and produced a number of evaluationreports. FREPA, being the latest of this lineage, devotesa considerable space for the AL approach among otherpluralistic approaches. It details (i) themes of focus relatedto knowledge, attitudes, and skills intended to attain bylearners, (ii) teaching materials, and (iii) a teacher-trainingkit (for further details about FREPA, see http://carap.ecml.at/CARAP/tabid/2332/language/en-GB/Default.aspx).Methodologically bent for pedagogy of discovery ([10]: 50)rather than attainment, the experimental effort in theseprojects highlights learning qualities of curiosity, reflection,and interaction. With all the findings collected, attention isnow channeled tomaking theAL approach rather convertibleinto a teachable substance in curriculum design.

3.3. Objectives. Scholars and practitioners interested in theAL approach have amassed scores of works reporting on thebenefits which are conductive to efficient learning for youngchildren. In light of a wealth of recommendations, a conciselook at the literature suggests that there is a great deal ofagreement over a triad of objectives whereby this approachis purported to promote ECE. These objectives consist in


(i) investing in identity building, (ii) fostering critical think-ing, and (iii) developing metalinguistic awareness.

3.3.1. Investing in Identity Building. Can FL education beconductive to identity building in young children? Thisquestion has been extensively explored both theoretically andempirically in the European circles. For instance, Azaoui [11]in his case-making project in support of an education of socialcoherence in multicultural European cities claims that theAL approach can play a determining role in cultivating newidentities open to diversity and accepting differences. Thiseducational project is, however, given peripheral attentioncompared with the prevailing view of FL teaching whichtreats an unfamiliar language, such as English, as a linguafranca that is culture free [12]. Language is therefore a modeof communication neutralized from its culturally imbuedsemantics. It is just another survival tool to serve theinstrumental values of market economy. Conversely, the ALapproach provides another vision of FL beyond the notionsof proficiency and assimilation. Accordingly, FL educationis to be viewed as a process of exploration where children“actively engage in comparing, contrasting, and reflecting onthe cultural values in the target culture” [13].

Identity should be accordingly understood in a discoursethat does not uphold a set-in-stone essentialist definitionof the concept anchored in a normative culture of FLclassrooms. It is, as Huhtala and Lehti-Eklund ([14]: 5)emphasize, “a process, as something flexible, hybrid andmultifaceted. Identity evolves in participation and it alwaysincludes a temporal dimension.” In this respect, FL learnersact as participants and not recipients, and, in the processof participation and exploration, their identity evolves alongepisodes of deconstruction and reconstructionwithin a spacewhich Claire Kramsch refers to as the third place. The thirdplace, according to Kramsch [7], is a symbolic space thatemerges between learners’ native language/culture and thetarget language/culture in their focus. Far from the binaryrelation between what is native or nonnative, this spacerepresents an experimental site for the learner to negotiatenew understandings of the target culture as well as their own,hence opening possibilities for new identity/identities whichare essentially transformative. FL classrooms become in thisregard a fertile ground for discursively constructed in-the-making identities away from the traditional image of lessondelivery to promote FL learning.

Interestingly, the vision underlying the AL approachstrongly meshes with the concept of the third place. Itis in the process of third place formation that the newidentities are discursively cultivated. That is, exposure tounfamiliar languages/cultures stimulates one’s emotional andcognitive resources to engage in a discourse of openness.Theconfiguration of such a discourse is premised on parameterssuch as empathy, awareness, sensitivity, understanding, andtolerance. The adoption of these attitudinal features maychange the sense of geography for children in their perceptionof the world and themselves. They do not only conceptualizevisible and invisible aspects of the target language/culturebut also discover how to distance themselves from their

native language/culture. Seeing one’s own language/culturefrom a distance would consolidate a new vision of the worldthat their native view of the world is just one possible viewamong many other views. Such a new understanding helpsshape a new identity which is capable of containing values ofopenness and diversity.

3.3.2. Fostering Critical Thinking. As the world is goingthrough drastic change, American and European thinktanks (e.g., US National Education Association) have beenengaged in developing new plans of action to meet newworld challenges. The Framework for 21st Century Learningis among the proposed paradigms to move 21st centuryeducation forward through promoting four master skills (i.e.,the four Cs) among which is critical thinking. Education-focused literature abounds in writings that define the conceptof critical thinking. Irrespective of divergence over whatconstitutes the concept, there is near unanimity that itsintegration into mainstream education helps learners engagesystematically and, therefore, master deeper analytical abili-ties such as reasoning, problem-solving, synthesizing, infer-ence, and reflective skepticism [15]. The necessity to observecritical thinking in ECE is driven by the challenges posedby the complexities of the present digital era and the reignof information. Children should be hence equipped withsuch intellectual tools whereby they manage properly andpurposefully the bulk of information they keep bombardingevery day. This also helps them envision the world criticallywith a great deal of relativism, thus acting within frame ofmind propitious for adopting and championing values oftolerance and openness to diversity.

This is not to deny that current educational agendasdo not encourage teaching critical thinking in curriculumdesign and implementation. Tunisian decision makers donot deflect from this principle although what we readilynotice, as field practitioners, is the contrary of the highorder objectives and the official syllabi reported. The realityshows a completely contradictory picture prevailed by apackaged type of thinking palpable in the fact-based waylearners see the world and the dominance of surface-levelstrategies in their schooling history. One example is themainstream evaluation system which quantifies learners’achievement on the basis of the mistakes they commit andnot the progress they make. Interestingly though, this doesnot come out of nowhere in view of the market-mindedchoices that justify the whole educational experience insteadof opting for citizenship education. FL education, as a casein point, is well influenced by the socioeconomic mindsetthat languages such as English represent survival tools thatincrease graduates’ chances in the market economy. Thislargely explains the overwhelming propensity to focus on theformal side of language. Even when dealing with culture, theprevailing teaching approach appears to be invariably facts-oriented. Instead of pushing learners to negotiate the targetculture(s), they tend to create unchecked ideas that throughtime congeal into stereotypes. It is to be noted here thatstereotyping has a deleterious effect on one’s capacity to thinkcritically because stereotypes, asWei ([16]: 18) maintains, “are


nothing more than standardized mental pictures reflectingan oversimplified opinion and have little or no ascertainablebasis in fact.”

Stereotyping is considered to be a reliable measure toindex packaged thinking as it is based on social categoriza-tion. That is, thinking stereotypically means that we envisionindividuals as members of a group or a class rather thanfocusing on their idiosyncrasy.This tendency for categorizingreflects authoritarian values that there should be hierarchiesbetween people, both culturally and socially. The outcomeof this thinking pattern, according to Moskowitz [17], iscultivating people who have less trust in others and show askeptical view of the “positive universalism of human nature.”In fact, the on-off relationship between packaged thinkingand stereotyping can be determined by our educationalchoices. Interestingly, the Aristotelian maxim “nature abhorsa vacuum” explains to some extent how the absence of criticalthinking is substituted by ready-made judgments whoseaccumulation stifles the mental habit of critical thinking. Inan educational milieu that favors critical thinking, childrenform hypotheses about a given stereotype, submit themto reasoning through using multiple techniques, such ascomparing and gathering assorted information, and decidewhether to support them, at least partially, or reject them.This process of revision immunizes individuals against thealternative of stereotyping.

The championing of the pluralistic stance in FL educationthrough the implementation of the AL approach can promoteand streamline critical thinking among young learners. Asmentioned earlier, exposing children to languages could bepart of the conceptualization process through which childrendevelop a greater ability to think critically. The AL approachhas the credit to open up a new symbolic third space inwhich they treat the target culture(s) reflectively. On the basisof a cultural reflexivity, this space qualifies as a liberatingforce allowing them “to question, to analyse, to evaluateand, potentially, to take action” ([18]: 146). All this processcertainly substantiates the spirit of relativity which graduallygrows into a style of thinking. Acting within such a frame ofmindmay ensure that these young learners would not only bereflecting critically on the “other” cultures but also relativizingtheir own culture away from their ethnocentric perceptionswhich are logically nourished by stereotypes. In a sense, thecultural relativismwhich they cultivate from their negotiatingand comparing cultural differences and similarities wouldfuel their mental habits to challenge any cultural assumptionsand put them under the scrutiny of questioning.

3.3.3. Developing Metalinguistic Awareness. Findingsreported on the role of exposing children from a very youngage to foreign languages and cultural/linguistic diversity sug-gested that they may develop metalinguistic awareness (i.e.,the ability to consciously reflect on the formal and functionalnature of language) that boosts their aptitude for languagelearning later in their schooling course. Consistent with thisassertion, Lourenco and Andrade [6] reported that a numberof studies probing the correlation between the AL approachand literacy acquisition concluded that one’s awareness of the

phonological configuration of a given language eases the wayto “crack the code” of its alphabetic system and subsequentlyother aspects of the additional language. Also, childrenwho undergo experimental AL-oriented programs developa sharp sensitivity that strengthens their decoding abilityto read as well as vocabulary retention. Contrarily, thoseunexposed to unfamiliar languages in their formative yearsare more likely to develop word decoding problems, which isprejudicial to the speed of their learning process [19].

The metalinguistic awareness accruing from children’ssystematic exposure to unfamiliar languages can be schema-tized into two different but complementary areas. The firstarea is concerned with the acquisition of a number of skillsequipping children with basic tools to approach the formalside of a given language. One of the widely researched aspectsof this area is phonological awareness. Defined by Lourencoand Andrade ([6]: 4) as “the ability to recognise, distinguish,andmanipulate the basic sound structures of a language, suchas syllables and phonemes,” phonological awareness includesskills such as auditory discrimination that enables children todistinguish sounds, intonation patterns, and sound systemsof unfamiliar languages. Also, among the other skills atten-dant to metalinguistic awareness occasioned by AL-orientedengagements are the ability of observation andmetalinguisticreasoning that presage better morphosyntactic manipulationamong children such as inferring simple rules from com-paring content of different languages, coining lexical andmorphological combinations. Such linguistic behavior mostlikely increases chances for restructuringwhich is an essentialelement in the dynamics of interlanguage development.

The second area of metalinguistic awareness relevant tothe AL approach is the acquisition of a basic knowledgeabout how languages function. Upon exposure to unfa-miliar languages, children are able to distinguish writingsystems of a particular language they do not master though.Additionally, the AL experience represents an opportunityfor them to widen their knowledge repertoire about worldlanguage families, language varieties, dialects, and so forth.This knowledge base will enable them to engage in in-depthreflections about the functioning of a particular languagethey intend to learn academically. It allows them to developa positive attitude towards language learning consideringit as a joyful rather than a thwarting learning experience.The day-to-day comparisons building on such a base mayadd vigor to their learning process since the access to morethan a language as Kuo and Anderson ([20]: 369) asserted“may render structural similarities and differences betweenlanguages more salient, allowing bilingual children to formrepresentations of language structure at amore abstract level.”

4. Introducing the AL Experience in Tunisia

Before delving in the applicability of the AL approachin the Tunisian context, it is worth reminiscing that thisapproach advanced by European scholars and practitionersemerged from the prerequisites of the political reality theysensed in their own countries. Multiculturalism as a concepthas developed from the mere status of a humanistic ideal


to become a political reality in cities receiving scores ofimmigrants from different ethnicities. Social harmony hasbecome an indispensable element to sustain the developmen-tal course of such urban entities which have become sociallydysfunctional due to tension arising from disparity of ethnicand cultural colors. Critical pedagogues have every reasonto contend that all forms of education are fundamentallypolitical underlying some ideological groundwork, whichconcurs with the now growing global citizenship educationmovement that endeavors to promote the image of culturallypluralistic world. Engineering identities which engage thevalues of social harmony, empathy, tolerance of diversity, anda sense of belonging to global contexts is a state affair in theEuropean and North American countries far from being anindividual enterprise based on one’s free will to map his/herfuture pathway.

The educational experience in Tunisia is unquestionablyno exception seeing politics has been deeply involved indictating its choices. The difference with fellow Europeanexperiences, however, rests on whether Tunisian education-alists have indeed a clear vision concomitant with the drasticchanges the world history is witnessing. This does not seemto be very obvious considering that curriculum building iscompletely decided or, at least, informed by market politicswhose main objective is how to grapple with the increasingscores of unemployment. In this purview, success of anyeducational program is primarily conditioned by its capacityto offer considerable rates of employability. The question thatis worth addressing here is whether this vision is actuallyin tandem with the current political agendas reflective ofthe essentials of globalization which is currently the drivinglocomotive of history making. The disparity is palpable incomparison with the European experience whose reliance oncitizenship education is among its priorities in outlining itsagenda.

Citizenship education sounds as approachable themethrough which we can reflect on the Tunisian schooling sys-tem which has a strong bearing on the social picture. Alongwith the abundance of social and psychological researchtheorizing about themounting social tension in society, thereis reason to contend that the market politics dominatingthe educational sector is largely responsible for cultivating apersonality model devoid of the basics of citizenship whichinvolve among other things qualities such as openness todiversity, empathy, and cultural understanding. The 2011Tunisian Revolution was an opportunity to cast the spotlighton the proscribed issues which revealed fragments of thecollective personality of Tunisians, including their conduct,psyche, vision of the world, and thinking style. For example,they awoke on a new reality where social tension andterrorism are occupying the news headlines on daily basis asif these anomalies fell overnight in this country. This senseof “surprise” mirrors the absence of a belief system throughwhichwe undergo episodes of self-evaluation and revisions inthe long run. For instance, the mainstream discourse amongintellectuals hardly broaches terrorism from an educationalperspective, that is, as a phenomenon underlying a dominantthinking pattern inhospitable to tolerance of differences andhence the by-product of the educational system.

It seems that the mindset of Tunisian educationalists hasbeen unprepared for the dialogue over the historicity of fun-damentalism as if this phenomenon is a political/ideologicalenterprise. Instead of averting this issue outside their internalcircles of debate, it is crucial to historicize this thinkingpattern as a natural eventuality of the driving force ofglobalization. Far from the moralist discourse and so theunderstanding that history is sometimes cruel but always just,the globalization processeswith their ensuing values of equal-ity, liberty, and democracy would naturally result in tensionand resentment of the other.This is translated into the counterforce of localization as we are in the midst of the greatestmovement of populations within and across countries to thedetriment of the traditional natural and national boundaries.Localization comes under different shapes and expressionssuch as xenophobia, racism, chauvinism, and ethnic conflicts.It is within this milieu that fundamentalism in Tunisia iscommonplace seeing ideas such as “Arabic is themother of alllanguages,” “all the world is conspiring against us,” and voicesfor the revival of archaic ways of life dating back to fourteencenturies ago.

The literature reflecting on the liaison between the glob-alization and localization does not exclusively draw a pictureof abnegation of the other as cross-cultural encounterssystematically yield two response patterns (i.e., systematictypes of behavior in reaction to cultural encounters). Thefirst response pattern, exemplified above, is based on oth-ering, an approach that emphasizes differences between theself as superior and the other as inferior and hostile andimplicitly ignores related similarities. It bears an essentialistview of culture(s) and identity as intractably fixed concepts.The second response pattern is positively associated withintercultural understanding that favors an amenable rela-tionship between the self and the other where the generaltendency is towards building on similarities rather than ondifferences (e.g., forms of acculturation in FL learning). It isinteresting tomention at this juncture that these two responsepatterns do not necessarily flourish in different geographicaland cultural spaces. They can also be ambivalently presentwithin one individual’s behavioral system. DeSousa ([21]: 2),in this respect, maintains that the cross-cultural encounterscan be stratified in a spectrum ranging from a “form ofseduction or confrontation, discovery or recovery, desireor loathing, wonder or disillusionment, peace or war.” Asthese response patterns are natural processes inherent onevery individual, it is the constant proceduralization ofeither pattern that consolidates future forms of the aboveoppositional/approachable identity poles.

In a widely globalized world, it follows that countrieswith no multicultural fabric such as Tunisia are not cate-gorically different from European cities in so far as cross-cultural encounters are concerned. FL program in ECEeducation being another important space for such encountersattests to the correlation between the response patterns andachievement rates. Evidence of such correlation is conspic-uous in view of the gender-based distribution in the FLlearning community in Tunisia. It is easy to notice, forinstance, that female FL learners outnumber considerablytheirmale counterparts and that they garner the lion’s share in


admission to FL university departments as well as FL-relatedvocations. This fact is far from being explained by technicaladvantages or gender-specific aptitudes for languages but it ispossibly justified by a disparity in the nature of the responsepatterns. Similar to Yoshimoto’s [22] emphasis on powerdynamics in her autobiographical report on four Japanesewomen, Tunisian females as a nondominant group seem to bemore receptive to unfamiliar languages/cultures. As tertiarystudents of English, their achievements in terms of sensitivityto accents, fluency, idiomaticity, and discourse patterns mayopen the possibilities for freedom and emancipation whereEnglish stands as a space to circumvent feelings of oppressionand subordination in an Arab world still dominated byconservatism. Oppositional response patterns seem to bemore associated with male students who hardly see in thoselanguages a liberating force (see [23] for details about how thegender-FL learning correlate proceeded for her main subjectMai).

Here lies the social accountability of FL education asa determining factor in identifying and promoting theapproachable response patterns rather than the oppositionalones. Other than its effort attendant to training, syllabusdesign, and occasional evolutions so as to “streamline” lan-guage learning, Tunisia’s FL educational community has toinvest in the language learner. As such, character buildingthrough cultivating identity models with proclivity for open-ness should be prioritized especially at the level of ECEwhichhas been least explored by FL educators (see Section 1). Inthis case, a new vision of FL training in this educational areashould be taking shape. Its main tenet is the promotion ofdiversity which allmakes sensewithin larger civic project thatgoes beyond simply learning a given language. The linguisticdiversity emanating from cross-cultural encounters to whichchildren are subject to through AL-based programs wouldbecome one cornerstone of their life style. Awareness andacceptance of such scope of variability cannot be dissociatedfrom other aspects of diversity (e.g., ethnic, religious, social,and territorial diversity) since they are not mutually interde-pendent.

Exposing children to unfamiliar languages would offerthem the cross-cultural encounters that enable them tonegotiate and procure new understandings of themselves andthe world around them. Due to the lack of chances to try suchencounters through travel, young children would typicallynaturalize the world within the boundaries of their localculture, seeing things as their culture predisposes them to see.Lo Bianco et al. ([24]: 4) draw a picture illustrating this frameof mind stating the following.

The cultural maps we hold in our minds to make senseof the world are tangible maps which we often mistake asimmutable truths. To dislodge the apparent immutability ofour cultural interpretations of the world requires a consider-able effort. It requires both educating themind to identify thecultural boundaries within which we operate and it requiresthe willingness to venture into the foreign and to potentiallybe changed by it.

What onemay discern from this short analysis is the focuson the concept of boundaries. The idea that Lo Bianco andhis associates seek to communicate here is that the primary

role of FL education should sensitize children about culturalboundaries. Once aware of those boundaries, children will beable to flexibly position themselves in and out and throughoutthis process.They will learn how to distance themselves fromtheir local culture to reach the understanding that their ownculture represents one world view among others. Therefore,what the AL approach offers to children is the chance toexercise engagement of the young self with the other and gainsubstantial elasticity to transcend cultural boundaries. Theywill become skilled negotiators rather than receptors withinthese encounters.Their view of the world and themselves willenable them to cultivate a sense of cultural relativism thatqualifies as a sort of cultural immunity against any behavioralanomalies such as chauvinism and hostility to diversity. Insum, the essence of FL learning in ECE education is toimmunize children against the dogmatic and oppositionalbehavioral patterns emanating from one’s confinement to thenarrow boundaries of his/her native language rather thansimply treating the very language as another skill to master.

Aside from the purported value that theAL approachmayadd to ECE within a larger project of citizenship education,there is ample reason to assert that it can be usefully andfeasibly adopted by ECE practitioners. Quite the reverse, thecurrent FL learning practice in Tunisia’s ECE requires exten-sive educator training and, obviously, trainees knowledgeableenough about a given language to secure the “transfer”process of linguistic information to children. This of courseis understood within the technicist spirit of excellence andthe market-minded view of languages such as English andFrench as tools for professional achievement. This realityignores the profile of ECE graduates whose training is rathermultidisciplinary and polyvalent reflecting the complexity oftheir future vocations. Nevertheless, a principled adoptionof an AL-oriented model of education does not necessitatean advanced command of a variety of languages where theECE practitioners undertake roles (e.g., facilitators, coaches,group animators, etc.) they are able to handle. Engagementin such an experience would make considerable sense tothem understanding that they are acting within a clear visionof education for citizenship where the ultimate goal of FLeducation, as Lo Bianco et al. ([24]: 5) maintain, is to undergoan “experience of enrichment, discovery, wonder, principledcompromise rather than domination, and peace rather thanconfrontation.”

5. Conclusion

Thepresent paper has the case-building purpose to introducethe plurilingual perspective as a viable option that may addpedagogical substance and efficiency to FL education foryoung children. Motivated by the case of my teaching experi-ence at an institution specialized in training early childhoodeducators, the paper attempted at first to diagnose the mainissue burdening this subfield of education that is the lack ofa guiding frame of reference. Signs reflecting such absenceof a vision appear in the unclear objectives establishing theframe of reference for FL educator training and the recourseto mainstream teaching models designed for a learning com-munity stratified in accordance with proficiency differentials


rather than age categories. Alternatively, the paper shedslight on an approach bent on exposing young children tounfamiliar languages far away from the concept of acquisitionand more into the values of discovery and reflection.

The AL approach, widely researched and implemented inthe past two decades across European and North Americaneducational communities, has the capacity to (i) cultivate or,at least, contribute to identities that favor openness, empathy,and cultural relativism, (ii) profess critical thinking styleamong youngsters and ward off forms of rigidity such asof stereotyping, and (iii) promote metalinguistic awarenessthrough the development of the basic linguistic habits (e.g.,observation and reflection) as well as favorable attitudes andthe predisposition to negotiate and acquire new languagesin their future academic career. The feasibility of the ALapproach in the Tunisian educational system is also discussedin this paper, as it follows that benefits for FL education canamount to its ability to grapple with issues that related theanomalies of chauvinism and fundamentalism increasinglyplaguing the Tunisian collective psyche. An additional benefitconsists in the technical solutions that would make of FLeducation an approachable enterprise in as much as ECEpractitioners playing new purposeful and easy-to-handleroles are concerned.

It seems difficult to deny that the introduction of theAL approach is fully engrained in the politics of childhoodeducation. A closer scrutiny of the big picture of this criticaldomain in Tunisia invites the assertion that we are inthe middle of two contrasting agendas, one agenda whichchampions a progressive model of education for citizenshipand another agenda which attempts to promote forms of fun-damentalism and cultural prejudice through disseminatingmadrassa-based models of teaching. As the latter is gainingground in our preschool system due to several reasons suchas the waning role of the Tunisian state, it is scholars’ socialand political responsibility to instill a number of revisionsin order to energize the former agenda that endorses valuesattendant to citizenship building. At this point, broachingFL education within a clear vision based on a plurilingualperspective would in part contribute to cultivating identitiesthat see cultural diversity as inviting and not as threaten-ing. This is possible through opening the young selves tothird places wherein they will be able to negotiate healthyflexible relationships between their cultural heritage and theother. That being said, our current global context, teemingwith inevitable cross-cultural encounters that yield assortedforms of collisions, overlaps, and tension, stipulates forms ofeducation sustaining cultural relativism. The adoption of theAL approach in ECE is therefore to be looked at as a formof investment in receptive approachable behavioral modelsthat involve empathy, respect for differences, and sense ofbelonging to both local and global citizenry. The battle is farfrom being neutral.

Conflict of Interests

The author declares that there is no conflict of interestsregarding the publication of this paper.

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