What Social Progress Indicators are Enhanced by Mother Tongue Instruction?

Abstract

This paper investigated on what social progress indicators are enhanced by Mother Tongue Instruction as evidence of better education outcomes particularly in terms of access to basic education, access to information and communication, access to advanced education and opportunity, personal life choices, adult literacy, freedom of expression and freedom of assembly. Online data of sixteen identified countries as the major implementer of Mother Tongue Instruction (MTI) based on the report of Asia Multilingual Education Mapping of Classroom and of Language Classroom Practices and 2017 Social Progress Index was mined and subjected to discriminant analysis. The countries were classified into less, moderate, and high users of MTI. With the use of statistical software, the data were processed using the linear discriminant analysis to analyze the social progress indicators of MTI implementer. The results showed that the enhanced social progress indices are the following: access to basic knowledge and information communication, personal life choices, freedom of expression, and assembly. It also revealed that there are three indicators - access to advanced education, opportunities, and adult literacy, which are considered trade-offs despite the enhanced social progress indicators of mother tongue instruction. Further studies on the world data on MTI policy are highly recommended to gain a broader perspective and understanding of the social progress enhanced in the mother tongue instruction.