Bridging Society, Development and Culture: Mother-Tongue Education for Empowering Minority Ethnic Communities in Bangladesh

This study explores how mother tongue-based multilingual education, strengthened with appropriate educational technology, can advance social and educational empowerment among minority ethnic communities in Bangladesh. It draws on sociolinguistics and the sociology of education to treat language as more than a classroom tool. Language is also a pathway to identity, dignity, participation, and equitable life chances. The research asks how technology-supported instruction affects engagement, attendance, learning achievement, and progression, and how it shapes language attitudes, classroom interaction, and community involvement. A mixed methods design is proposed. Linguistic ethnography will document home and school language practices through classroom observation, interactional transcripts, and interviews with students, parents, teachers, and local leaders. Quantitative measures will track baseline and endline learning outcomes, retention, and teacher practice indicators. The project co-designs and evaluates a low-cost digital support package that works in low-connectivity settings, including offline-first micro-lessons, community-recorded audio stories, bilingual e-books aligned with curriculum goals, and teacher learning modules on inclusive pedagogy and translanguaging. It also examines digital constraints such as device sharing, connectivity gaps, and varied literacy levels so that technology reduces rather than reproduces inequality. The expected contribution is practical evidence for language in education policy, scalable edtech design, and culturally sustaining teaching that can reduce dropout risk, improve foundational learning, and strengthen social inclusion through mother tongue education.