Educators’ attitudes towards the role of isiZulu in education: Additive rather than exclusive

Abstract

It is crucial to find out if African educators are ready to embrace the language in education policy that should mostly benefit the education of African children. For this reason, the study reported in this article was set out to survey through a questionnaire the isiZulu-speaking educators’ attitudes on the issue of the role of African languages in education, with regard to the use of isiZulu in the Durban district of the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN). It was found that while the respondents were generally in favour of the use of African languages as media of instruction they also equally expected the early introduction of English. Educators believed that the mixing of English with isiZulu during the instruction of content subjects is beneficial in education. However, some of them envisaged a future where English will continue to dominate the lives of African people. This indicates mixed views on the role of African languages in education and society that can be taken to suggest that bilingual education or code-switching is the favoured approach by many educators.

Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 2013, 31(2): 185–205