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From Peanut Butter to Eid … Blending Perspectives: Teaching Urdu to Children in Canada
Abstract
The focus of this article is to examine the notions of language learning, heritage (referring to tradition) and ancestry (descendants & properties passed on), and cultural identification for Urdu-speaking immigrant children now living in Canada. This article provides a detailed ethnographic account of an innovative language program developed to teach Urdu to children within the Canadian context. The author draws on the research of Taylor (1983)7.
Taylor , D. 1983. Family literacy: Young children learning to read and write, Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. View all references to show that the evolution of literacy transmission is highly dependent on the childhood experiences of individual educators and evolves through the interplay of their unique biographies and educative styles, including the use of various texts. Questions explored include the following: What types of texts are used? What are the students' reactions to the texts? What are the teacher's practices within the classrooms? What kind of an impact does the learning of Urdu have on the identity construction of these children?
... In these studies, two cultural identity constructs are presented in opposition to one another, with home and school often representing such conflicting contexts (Ogbu, 2008;Zhou, 1997). For instance, Naqvi (2008) found that the community education settings represented the home culture of Urduspeaking children of immigrants and did not relate to their formal schooling experiences. At the same time, several studies associated cultural congruence with the success of WesternEuropean immigrants, who had advantages in their adjustment into mainstream cultural practices (Portes & Zhou, 1993). ...
This qualitative case study utilized hybridity theory, particularly the notion of third spaces, to investigate the ways Turkish immigrants (18 parents and 15 children) negotiate culture, identity, and schooling in the midwestern United States. Data were collected through in-depth interviews, observations, and artifacts, and analyzed using traditional qualitative analysis tools. The findings demonstrated that Turkish immigrants’ identity negotiation in third spaces included five elements: (1) drawing from multiple discourses, (2) navigating geo-cultural spaces, (3) becoming agents of negotiation, (4) mediating conflicts, and (5) regenerating traditions. These findings have several implications. Educators should understand the importance of out-of-school experiences that highlight the agency of immigrant children and their families so they can better support the children’s academic and social growth. Further, educators and policymakers should rethink the notion of “immigration” and the traditional role of schools in this process as these may not reflect the complexity of contemporary immigrant identities.
... Kenner, Al-Azami, et al. (2008) described a bilingual poetry project in a Bangladeshi community in East London where, with intergenerational support, children learned a poetic range spanning generations , languages, and cultures. In addition, Naqvi (2008), working with Pakistani immigrants, reported on bicultural minority language resources for children in schools in western Canada. Though these projects involved primarily alphabetic literacies (though not necessarily the same alphabets), they incorporated the languages of families split by acculturation into old and new countries in ways that were less rigid and more fun than timetabled L2 classes. ...
Globalization and digitization have reshaped the communication landscape, affecting how and with whom we communicate, and deeply altering the terrain of language and literacy education. As children in urban contexts become socialized into communities of increasing cultural and communicational connectivity, complexity, and convergence (Jenkins, 2004), and funding for specialist second language (L2) support declines, classrooms have become linguistically heterogeneous spaces where every teacher is a teacher of L2 learners.
This article has two purposes: The first is to give an overview of the concept of multimodal literacies, which utilize diverse media to represent visual, audio, gestural, spatial, and tactile dimensions of communication in addition to traditional written and oral forms (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009a). Since the New London Group's manifesto on multiliteracies in 1996, which merged language and literacy education agendas in L2 teaching, language arts, media literacy, and cultural studies, new basics have developed that apply to all classrooms and all learners. Second, this article reviews and reports on innovative pedagogical approaches to multimodal literacies involving L2 learners. These are grounded theoretically (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009a, 2009b; Kress, 2003, 2010; New London Group, 1996) and epistemologically (de Castell & Jenson, 2003; Gee, 2009, 2010; Kellner, 2004; Lankshear & Knobel, 2003, 2006).
... In these studies, two cultural identity constructs are presented in opposition to one another, with home and school often representing such conflicting contexts (Ogbu, 2008;Zhou, 1997). For instance, Naqvi (2008) found that the community education settings represented the home culture of Urduspeaking children of immigrants and did not relate to their formal schooling experiences. At the same time, several studies associated cultural congruence with the success of WesternEuropean immigrants, who had advantages in their adjustment into mainstream cultural practices (Portes & Zhou, 1993). ...
This article presents findings from a study that investigated intercultural teaching through teachers’ collaborative conversations about critical intercultural incidents in schools. The data were generated through Web-CT and face-to-face dialogues between preservice, inservice, and university teachers about critical intercultural incidents identified by the preservice candidates during practicum experiences. Findings focus on teachers’ intercultural decision making within two broad categories: “minding” (making choices, enabling cultures, respecting and sharing power, and arbitrating and agonizing what is just) and “responding” (fostering intercultural communities, opening “safe” spaces, protecting students and surroundings, and “stepping up” to address it). Implications include the role of social and emotional learning and power dynamics in intercultural teaching and the potential for a case-study approach to intercultural teacher education.
This article explores the identity struggles of a community of Tibetan refugee women in the Indian Himalayas whose educational program combines a traditional Buddhist philosophical curriculum in Tibetan alongside a modern, secular bilingual curriculum in English-Tibetan. Ethnographic and action research data illustrate how negotiations of meanings in multicultural, multilingual EFL/EIL contexts go well beyond mere linguistic features to include cultural and gender identity struggles. Five students serve as case studies to consider five alternative patterns of identity and language negotiations: rejection, assimilation, marginality, bicultural accommodation, and intercultural creativity. The author relates these cross-cultural identity negotiations to various gender identity stances. She concludes by recommending a program of inter-cultural language teaching to address the increasingly global context of English language teaching and learning.
Shares one teacher's attempts to highlight diversity and children's cultures in authentic ways. Examines three children's connections to culture and their own cultural identities by looking at issues they explored across the school year (family, family and religion, and ethnicity). Situates the discussion of multiculturalism in the context of "kid culture." (SR)
Other than myself/my other self
- T T Minh-Ha
Minh-ha, T. T. (1994). Other than myself/my other self. In G. Robertson, M. Mash, L. Tickner, J. Bird, B. Curtis, & T. Putnam (Eds.), Travellers' tales. Narratives of home and displacement (pp. 9–25). New York: Routledge.
Family literacy: Young children learning to read and write
- D Taylor
Taylor, D. (1983). Family literacy: Young children learning to read and write. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Urdu for Children: Book One
- S S Alvi
Alvi, S. S. (Ed.). (1997). Urdu for Children: Book One. Montreal, QC, Kingston, ON, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Learning a language is like
- C Kramsch
Kramsch, C. (1999). Learning a language is like. Language teaching at Berkley (Vol. 14).
- Alvi S. S.