Swiss Vocational Education and Training (VET) is based on national legislation which was introduced in the 1930s and renewed in the 1960s (as well as in the 1970s and in 2002). At first, the goal of the national VET legislation was to further Vocational Education and Training in order to support small and medium enterprises; however, later, it…

"Promoting public understanding" is what the programming mandate asks the Swiss public broadcasting company SRG SSR to do. From a sociolinguistic perspective, this means linking speech communities with other speech communities, both between and within the German-, French-, Italian-, and Romansh-speaking parts of Switzerland. In the…

This article explores the impact of language policy issues on program development and management at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich Language Center. Based on the analysis of the language policy approach of the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, the article reflects both current practices and policy elements with the help of the…

Results from the 2000 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Assessment (PISA) indicated that inequalities in performance associated with students' family background were relatively large in Switzerland compared to other participating countries. The study upon which this article is based examines…

A discussion of multilingualism in Switzerland begins with a description of the country's linguistic characteristics. Historical Swiss policy recognizing four official languages, one of which (Romansch) is spoken by very few people, is compared with the current situation in which internal and external migration and multilingualism are common. The…