The Development and Expansion of Multilingual Education in Cambodia: An Application of Ruiz’s Orientations in Language Planning

Abstract

In honor of Richard Ruiz and his legacy of contributions to the field, this article highlights the influence of Ruiz’s seminal 1984 article “Orientations in Language Planning.” Ruiz proposed a framework of three orientations to language planning—language-as-problem, language-as-right, and language-as-resource. Ruiz argued for a language-as-resource orientation to alleviate some of the problems and conflicts emerging out of the other two orientations. In this article we demonstrate the continuing relevance of Ruiz’s framework by applying it to our current research on the development and expansion of multilingual education (MLE) for indigenous ethnic minority students in the remote mountainous (highlands) region of northeastern Cambodia. Specifically we analyze the problems and tensions that stemmed from problem- and rights-based orientations in the initial development of MLE, and highlight more recent shifts to a resource-orientation in current efforts to further develop and expand the program to serve a greater number students.