The article “Policy and teaching English to Palestinian students in Israel: An ecological perspective to language education policies” by Amara (2014) explores the aspects of multilingual instruction to the students who pertain to the cultural minorities. The narrative of the source entails that Palestinian students in Israel learn the Arabic language in their schools since it is their native language, also dedicating a lot of time to mastering Hebrew to ensure that they can completely socialize and adapt to the Israeli community. Yet, it is crucial to note that English has to bear the same importance as the first two languages since it gives Palestinian students a vast array of opportunities to proceed with their education to the international level and explore the world in its global context. At this point, the question of the ecological perspective to education arises.
Ecological perspective to the multilingual instruction of Palestinian students in Israel implies that the learners have to have access to all educational tools, resources, and materials to learn all three languages they need. According to Amara (2014), ecological perspective to the language instruction needs to be characterized by the multidimensional involvement of “social, political, economic, cultural, religious and ideological” (p.6) aspects that formulate the context of the existence of people in the given society. Therefore, it is evident that Palestinian students in Israel need to have the open opportunities to learn English which is an integral part of Israeli education and thus it has to be supported and promoted among the minorities.
Taking everything into consideration, the article by Amara (2014) presupposes that the political agenda should not interfere with educational perspectives because even though Palestinian students in Israel pertain to the minorities, they have to be the full-fledged participants of the multilingual instruction, having the same learning opportunities as Israeli students. It is possible to note that the analysis of the language use creates the favorable context of multilingual education because Palestinian students have to learn at least three languages to feel the complete participation in the social life of the country where they live.
- Amara, M. (2014). Policy and teaching English to Palestinian students in Israel: An ecological perspective to language education policies. In Minority languages and multilingual education (pp. 105-118). Springer, Dordrecht.
