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... sets of data were therefore analysed; (1) semi-structured focus group discussions with four groups of children as can be seen in Table 1; (2) individual interviews with four children from focus groups as can be seen in Table 2; (3) individual interviews with parents of four children as can be seen in Table 3 and (4) an individual interview with the teacher of a weekend Polish language school. ...Citations
... In our study, we explore how ECEC staff encourage and support the children's HLs across various formal and informal situations. By home languages (HLs), we refer to all languages other than Norwegian that are used in the children's homes (see Connaughton-Crean & Ó Duibhir, 2017). In the following, we firstly present theoretical perspectives and previous research on HL support in mainstream ECEC centres, before describing the methods used in this study, and finally, going on to analyse and discuss our data. ...
In Norway, 92% of all children between 1 and 5 attend early childhood education and care (ECEC), and 18% of these children are minority language speakers. The Framework Plan for Content and Tasks of Kindergartens (Ministry of Education, 2017, p. 24) states that ECEC staff shall ‘help ensure that linguistic diversity becomes an enrichment for the entire group of children and encourage multilingual children to use their mother tongue while also actively promoting and developing the children’s Norwegian/Sami language skills’. In this paper, we present a study of how home language (HL) support takes place within the context of Norwegian ECEC, focusing on the strategies used by the staff to promote HL use. After analysing 26 narratives from practice, we found that the most common strategies employed were initiating activities that encourage HL use, facilitating metalinguistic conversations and consulting/involving language experts. The strategies available depend on contextual factors, such as the number of children present and the languages spoken by both children and staff. The HL support strategies are discussed in light of the interplay between teachers’ language ideologies, planned actions and spontaneous responses in situations where children’s HLs are involved inspired by the theories in García, Johnson and Seltzer’s study (2017).
... For example, Nowlan (2008) and Lyons (2010) both reported a tendency for teachers to adopt monolingual, deficit approaches to EAL teaching, where the acquisition of English was given prominence, and home languages were afforded little value. A lack of awareness regarding diverse home literacy practices alongside limited teacher knowledge of EAL learners' first language proficiency can limit the potential of crosslingual transfer in the classroom (Kitching, 2006;Ó Duibhir and Cummins, 2012) and influence children's perceptions of their home language (Connaughton-Crean & Ó Duibhir, 2017). The Primary School Curriculum (Department of Education and Science [DES], 1999) was written for a system that pre-dated multilingualism, and therefore provided little support and direction for teachers in this domain. ...
The growth in linguistic diversity in Irish primary schools presents significant opportunities. Learners for whom English is an additional language (EAL) contribute to the rich tapestry of our classrooms. However, ensuring that their achievement is adequately supported requires attention in both policy and practice. Part of a broader study of EAL in Irish primary classrooms, the present article reports on how teachers from seven schools went about organising support for EAL learners at a time of significant curriculum and policy change. Findings relating to the use of support hours, resourcing, special education needs and assessment are discussed.
It is well-established in both scholarship and policy documents that students’ home language practices can be leveraged as a key resource for their learning. However, it can be challenging for teachers to embed students’ language resources in class activities in ways that link to wider learning objectives. We report how the inclusion of home language literacy practices can both enhance English language learning and promote multiliteracies. Data are drawn from a design-based study on the incorporation of home languages in the teaching of English. In the article, we focus on the teaching and learning that occurred in the classroom of two English as an Additional Language (EAL) teachers. Data collected comprised lesson sequences, teacher reflection, student work samples and student reflection. It was found that teacher-initiated support for home language literacy practices led to positive student engagement. The support included giving an active role to bi/multilingual teaching assistants and Google Translate.
Despite an increase in ethnic diversity within the state, the Irish teaching workforce remains starkly mono-ethnic. This article is based on an analysis of data generated through a sequential explanatory mixed method research project involving questionnaire responses from 240 migrant teachers and subsequent focus group with a selection of teachers. Findings suggest that migrant teachers are slow to engage in the formal accreditation process, and face considerable challenges when they do. This reflects not only practical difficulties, but also narrow discourses of who can legitimately be recognised as a teacher in Ireland. This in turn is linked to cultural arbitraries highlighted through the research, such as a requirement to be able to teach through the Irish language in primary school and a requirement to be registered to teach in primary or post-primary schools only. In exploring these barriers, we draw broadly on Bourdieu and Passeron’s (1990) work, which understands teachers as pedagogic agents, imbued with pedagogic authority through formal processes of accreditation and selection. These processes involve the imposition of cultural arbitraries which legitimate certain languages, content or stances over others. Recommendations include revisions to the registration process to take previous teaching experience into account.
In an era marked by globalisation and migration, heritage languages and their use in particular societies is gaining interest. Yet, research into one of the world’s largest heritage languages, Spanish, has primarily focussed on the United States of America. This article examines an under-researched topic of the Spanish-speaking community in Australia. This heterogenous community is far more recent and has received far less scholarly recognition than that of its closely researched North American counterpart. Moreover, considering the complexity of language usage, heritage language research has concentrated on standardised use rather than on regional dialects. This directly influences the strategic significance of regional dialects as Latin American Australians are framed as a homogenous community to the broader Anglophone public. This article adds to the current body of research from a unique Australian perspective. Survey and interview data from 100 members of the Argentinian community explores their reasons and use of Castellano Rioplatense. It argues that Castellano Rioplatense is perceived to accrue status and is a means where Argentineans maintain a distinct linguistic and cultural differentiation within the broader Latin American community.
In Brazil, the learning of a second language (L2) by native Brazilian Portuguese speakers has been extensively explored, but studies on language processing and language interaction among bilinguals are quite recent. The late bilingualism of the first-generation immigrants has been studied mainly from the perspective of their difficulties in learning Brazilian Portuguese. Brazil has numerous communities of heritage speakers of many languages such as Japanese, German, Italian, Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian. However, the number of studies that focus on the bilingual speech of heritage speakers in Brazil is also quite limited. The aim of the current study is to evaluate the working memory in Russian-Brazilian Portuguese bilinguals as a function of the language and type of bilingualism. For this purpose, 49 first-generation Russophone immigrants and 28 older Russian heritage speakers, all residing in Brazil, were tested in Russian and Portuguese using a Month-Ordering task. We found that the working memory scores of the first-generation Russophone immigrants were not statistically different between both languages, but the median working memory score of the older Russian heritage speakers in Russian was 1.5-fold lower than in Portuguese. As next steps, we plan to verify the relation between the working memory capacity and narrative production abilities of the older Russian heritage-Brazilian Portuguese bilinguals in their heritage and societal languages.
This study is a sociolinguistic exploration into the survival of a transnational language in the United States-a multilingual and multicultural environment. Using an adapted General Ethnicity Questionnaire, it interrogates the social dimensions of heritage language use and the diverse linguistic experiences of 120 first-generation Yorùbá-English Nigerian Immigrants living in New York, Texas, and Maryland. It also conducts structured interviews with 30 of them. The study tests two hypotheses that examine the significance of age and length of stay on heritage language use. Findings reveal that first-generation Yorùbá-English Nigerian Immigrants report high frequencies of heritage language use with their co-ethnic peers as well as in their self-created micro-linguistic markets. Results also show that age and the length of stay are significant to heritage language use in the United States. Finally, these immigrants create enabling environments where the heritage language is used frequently, ensuring continued use and survival.
