Psychological explanations and possible management of consequences regarding language use and educational practice caused by the decrease of ethnic diversity in heterogeneous settings in Central-Eastern Europe

AbstractThe paper offers psychological explanations for linguistic and educational issues that arise as a result of the accelerated loss of cultural and linguistic diversity in heterogeneous settings in Central-Eastern Europe, attributable mainly to the decline in the number of indigenous ethnic minorities. The aim is to analyze the psychological mechanisms of language and culture shift using knowledge from the psychology of learning (operant and classical conditioning) and motivation, seeking answers to the following research questions: 1) What are the possible psychological explanations of the decrease of minority language use, and linguistic and cultural shift?, and 2) What are the guiding principles that should be taken into consideration when choosing the medium of education/instruction for indigenous ethnolinguistic children in Central-Eastern Europe to mitigate this decrease? A systematic review conducted on sources from the field of the psychology of multilingualims running the SCOPUs database, and the applied behaviour analysis (ABA) on selected sources has shown that such a systematic analysis is missing. The context of the analysis is the debate between representatives of pluralistic conceptions and their opponents over language use and educational practice that support sustainable development in heterogeneous regions. Analysing their views it turned out that the linguistic and cultural shift can be, at least partly, explained with the mechanisms of positive reinforcement, punishment, avoiding, and with the concepts of learned helplessness and culture shock. It is concluded that strong models of multilingual education, relying on pluralists` view, offer ways to slow down the decrease of diversity. The Minority SafePack Initiative that calls for protection of European language minorities seems justifiable, but further research is needed on interactions between decline of diversity and developmental processes in children