Multilingualism has long shaped African social life, yet schooling in Ghana continues to privilege English in ways that reflect enduring colonial legacies (Bamgbose, 2014; Heugh, 2005). Children arrive in classrooms with rich linguistic resources grounded in community, culture, and indigenous knowledge, but language policy often determines the forms of speech and ways of being that are recognized as legitimate (Owu-Ewie, 2006). In this presentation, Dartey reflects on his dissertation research on multilingual education in Ghanaian elementary schools to consider how language policies are lived, interpreted, and negotiated in everyday classroom practice. Drawing on Frantz Fanon’s theorization of the colonial encounter, he approaches language as a site of racialized identity formation and ideological control. He places this in conversation with Afro-communitarian philosophical frameworks of personhood, which view language as a shared, ethical, and relational resource. Together, these frameworks allow us to think through multilingual classroom practices as decolonial possibilities that sustain cultural continuity, challenge monolingual norms, and affirm collective humanity in postcolonial Black educational contexts.


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Wednesday, January 28, 2026, 12:30 p.m.–1:30 p.m.
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