This work is the ninth volume in the "Collected Works of M.A.K. Halliday" series. The ninth volume in Professor M.A.K. Halliday's collected works is dedicated to the subject of language and education. Professor Halliday sums up the scope of language education under the following five headings: mother tongue education; second language learning; multilingual societies; contexts of language education; and educational linguistics.

In addition to the previously unpublished "Applied Linguistics as an Evolving Theme" (2002) originally presented by Professor Halliday on the occasion of his being awarded the first Gold Medal by the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA), this volume contains another nineteen papers covering a comprehensive breadth of topics in language and education addressed by Professor Halliday over the course of his career. The chapters cover language development, language teaching, multilingualism, functional variation in language, and the place of linguistics in education.