Teachers’ Use of MTB-MLE Strategies in Multilingual Lower Primary School Grades of Chongwe Rural District

This study investigated the use of Mother Tongue Based Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE) strategies by teachers at Primary school level in Chongwe Rural District. The study is informed by Ruiz’s three language orientation theory which views language as either being a resource, problem or a as a right depending on the users’ language ideologies and conceptualizations. Adopting a descriptive research design, the study used qualitative research approach through focus group discussions, classroom lesson observations and document analysis. The sample size was thirty teachers of Primary from ten schools of Chongwe District. The participants were sampled using purposive sampling while thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings revealed that most teachers in Chongwe District used a variety of MTB-MLE strategies in the classroom including translanguaging, picture stories, songs and real objects to engender learners’ multilingual identities. Based on these strategies, it was clear that majority of teachers recognized learners’ multilingual backgrounds and used these strategies in order to help diverse learners to access learning. In so doing, teachers negotiated the monoglossic language policy in an attempt to make their lessons learner centric. The study recommended that Ministry of Education (MOE) should come up with a deliberate policy where teachers from time to time are capacity built on how to handle learners in multilingual contexts. In addition, teachers should be more liberal and innovative in the classroom by making use of other minority languages in their multilingual language practices rather than limiting multilingualism to official languages.