Attitudes towards mother tongue education in Manipur, Northeast India

Abstract The significance of the mother tongue, and particularly mother tongue education, is widely acknowledged across the world. This study aims to investigate mother tongue attitudes of students, teachers, parents, and community members in Manipur. A self-report survey was used to collect data from 463 participants, and an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between demographic characteristics and attitudes towards mother tongue education. The findings were used to better comprehend the affective, behavioural, and cognitive (ABC) model. The overall findings of the study shows that participants had a favourable attitude towards mother language education, however the majority believe that it is not promoted at the policy level. This study suggests that, given the favourable attitude towards the mother tongue, there is an urgent need to recognise and promote mother tongue education at the policy level-developing multilingual education programmes-to increase educational quality and explore the barriers to its success and sustainability.