14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Paper
Experiences of Practitioners, Students, and Parents of Multiculturalism in Southwest England Schools: Findings of a Multiple Case Study Research
Suparna Bagchi
Plymouth Institute of Education, United Kingdom
Presenting Author: Bagchi, Suparna
Migration, increasing diversity, and dynamic community relationships, among other things, have been facilitated by twenty-first-century global communications bringing the world to our fingertips. The challenge lies in making multicultural communities thrive. The awareness of issues around diversity, racism, and cultural cohesion has heightened following the killing of George Floyd in the USA in 2020. Isabelle Mukadi, a Black Lives Matter British activist claimed in a BBC interview (2020) that it is high time to revise the National Curriculum. This is necessary for the increasing awareness among students from ethnic minority communities (referred to as global majority communities in the present study) who are interested in a Curriculum, which links to their lived experiences and identities. This is particularly relevant in areas of historically low diversity which have more recently experienced a rise in their global majority population and where inclusive growth was highlighted as a challenge.
Multicultural education might better support the inclusion of these children. It involves two essential elements: equity and cultural awareness, which entail, fulfilling the educational, social, and psychological requirements of ethnically diverse children and preparing all pupils for a multicultural society through an awareness of and a commitment to the desire for change among both the dominant majority and global majority communities. The National Curriculum today is the core of the educational enterprise with the teachers as the curriculum framers. A revised Curriculum can be the starting point in which the teachers might play a significant part. The task design is crucial where teachers can place equal importance not only on ‘how’ the task is taught but also on ‘what’ and ‘why’ it is taught as all these three are intricately interwoven. The teachers might use the Curriculum as a means to encourage difficult conversations breaking the stereotypical barriers, thus helping to form students’ conception of a multicultural Britain. This may boost a plural and hospitable dimension to national identity for the global majorities, telling the national story where they feature as important characters as well, thus creating "a common identity in which all can see themselves, and giving all a sense of belonging to each other" (Modood, 2012:216). A sense of belonging thus fostered among ethnically diverse students from global majority communities might uplift their self-esteem and help in their confidence building process.
My research aims to explore multiculturalism in South West England primary schools.
My research questions are:
- What are the experiences of practitioners, students, and parents on multiculturalism in four mainstream primary schools in England?
- How are the classroom experiences of practitioners, students, and parents shaped by the primary National Curriculum in England?
I have adopted the sociocultural theories which help to understand individuals’ cognitive development as inseparable from their social, cultural-historical context. Socio-cultural theoretical concepts emerging from the works of Lev Vygotsky (1986) as applied by Barbara Rogoff (1993) and Holland et al. (1998) were used in the present study. Rogoff’s concept of guided participation in cultural activities helped to understand students’ experiences of multiculturalism while participating in and being guided by their community’s practices through the use of particular tools (2003). The concept of figured worlds formulated by Holland et al. helped to understand the adult participants’ experiences which come from an interplay between personal meaning-making and a shared collective understanding of multiculturalism mediated by power relations with selective and variable emotional bonding and significances. I have also borrowed from Nasir and Hand (2006) who used socio-cultural theory emphasizing the local context by considering the broader issues of power, race, and social structure (im)balances which affect it and where it plays out (like within education settings).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedAmidst COVID-19, following my conversation with the gatekeeper, I crafted a predominantly remotely conducted research study based on sensitive, innovative, and respectful research methods. I adopted a qualitative single holistic/collective case study (Yin, 2009) in four primary schools located in the southwestern city of Plymouth, United Kingdom. This helped to understand the prevailing trend of multiculturalism in other schools with similar demography and location. An opportunistic negotiated sampling was adopted to identify and gather rich data. Participants in each school include one Year Group (8-10 years old), the teacher, the head of Year Group, the headteacher, and parents from the global majority and dominant majority communities. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews via Zoom with the adult participants, observation of students’ classroom activities, and documentary analysis of the corridor and classroom displays. The purpose of involving children and adults is to have a co-construction of meaning as an interpretivist epistemological approach, which embraces a wide range of specific views regarding the nature of knowledge, and how it is constructed and communicated (Clarke and Moss, 2011).
I have adhered to the BERA guidelines in my research (2018). Among the standard list of things, I have included a detailed COVID-19 safety protocol as a “Covid times” researcher. My research involved tricky dilemmas which called for the sensitive and ethical handling of uncomfortable conversations around multiculturalism and race equality during the data collection process. Another dilemma revolved around a prolonged negotiation period with a whole range of voices in my research. I had to negotiate carefully with the participating schools which were already stretched to limits in the ongoing pandemic. I had to ensure my adaptability to participants’ needs as their participation ability and responses could change further and abruptly motivated by the pandemic situation. My logical methodological exploration had to be rigorously instilled throughout while personally readjusting to social interactions as an academic going through tremendous emotional turmoil, which in turn seemed to contribute to my flexible and accommodating attitude.
I used NVivo, Word, and Excel for data analysis and interpretation. I selected reflexive thematic analysis to flexibly explore ways in which themes can form reality in specific ways in the participants’ lived experiences with multiculturalism (Braun and Clarke, 2022). Validity, reliability, and credibility were sought at all stages of my research.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThere are a few studies (Knight’s doctoral thesis, 2018). The 2013 Plymouth University project conducted by Cotton et al. did not study settled global majority communities exclusively. Until the primary education system introduces a Curriculum embracing all communities, the children from global majority communities will continue to live in an ‘invisible state’ and more so, in areas where these people are comparatively fewer. The originality lies in attempting a holistic exploration of multiculturalism, possibly for the first time applying the sociocultural theoretical framework in a peculiar demographic location. We are passing through a phase of alienation in the ongoing pandemic, the aftermath of Brexit, and the BLM movement. Although set in a local context of a southwestern British city, my research is a timely topic of study related to educational concerns. It clearly links to Europe-wide considerations of how cultural awareness can be experienced through the practice of multicultural education in educational institutions. My research may contribute to the ongoing studies supporting a multicultural curriculum, thus, having a wider appeal to a broader audience with national and international interests. My findings may also guide policymakers to identify potential areas where culturally relevant intervention programs can be directed.
The presentation will focus on the research findings which hint towards three broad revelations:
• Gaps in multicultural knowledge among practitioners and parents
• Doubtfulness towards multiculturalism among practitioners amidst a host of intersectionality issues
• A general enthusiasm towards multiculturalism among students
I am hopeful that my research study may encourage educators to raise awareness about the inclusion of children from ethnic minorities which in turn, might assist in creating safe places for them in schools and society, at large.
ReferencesBBC News. (2020). BBC News Channel, 8 June 2020
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2022). Thematic Analysis: a practical guide. SAGE publications.
British Educational Research Association (BERA) 4th ed. (2018) Ethical Guidelines for Education Research London
Cantle, T., (2018). Community cohesion: A new framework for race and diversity. Springer.
Clark, A. and Moss, P. (2011). Listening To Young Children: The Mosaic Approach (2nd ed.). London: National Children's Bureau.
Cotton, D., George, R. and Joyner, M. (2013). The gender and ethnicity attainment gap research project. Pedagogic Research Institute and Observatory (PedRIO).
D’Arcy, K. (2014). ‘Educational Inclusion: Meeting the Needs of all Traveller Groups’ in Race, R. and Lander, V. (eds) Advancing race and ethnicity in education, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.47-62.
Daniels, H. (2016). Vygotsky and pedagogy. Routledge.
Department of Education and Science (1985) Education for All. London: HMSO.
Holland D., Lachicotte W. Jr., Skinner D., & Cain C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Knight, H. (2018). The Impact of Arts Education Programmes on Anti-Racist School Practice in the South West of England. University of Plymouth.
Lander, V. (2014). ‘Initial Teacher Education: the practice of whiteness’ in Race, R. and Lander, V. (eds) Advancing race and ethnicity in education, London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.93-110.
Leeson, C. (2014). Asking difficult questions: exploring research methods with children on painful issues, International Journal of Research & Method in Education, 37:2, pp.206-222.
Modood, T. (2012). Multiculturalism and integration: Struggling with confusions. Multiculturalism and Integration: Struggling with Confusions, pp.203-218.
Moncrieffe, M.L. (2020). Decolonising the History Curriculum: Euro-centrism and primary schooling. Springer Nature.
Nasir, N.I.S. and Hand, V.M. (2006). Exploring sociocultural perspectives on race, culture, and learning. Review of educational research, 76(4), pp.449-475.
Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. Oxford university press
Torres, C.A. and Tarozzi, M. (2020). Multiculturalism in the world system: towards a social justice model of inter/multicultural education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 18(1), pp.7-18.
Troyna, B. and Edwards, V. (1993). The Educational Needs of a Multiracial Society. Centre for Research in Ethnic Relations. Coventry: University of Warwick.
Vygotsky, L. S. (1986). Thought and Language, A. Kozulin, (Ed. and Trans.), Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press.
Yin, R.K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (Vol. 5). Sage.
Zivkovic, K. (2019). A comparison of multicultural education in the USA and the EU with reference to Austria.
14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Paper
“Dancing in the Margins of Teaching” The Pedagogical Agility of Research-led Community Languages Teachers in Victoria, Australia
Maria Gindidis, Jane Southcott
Monash University, Australia
Presenting Author: Gindidis, Maria;
Southcott, Jane
Across Australia, approximately 100,000 students are taught outside the mainstream education system in any one of 60 community languages offered in schools organised by communities. Community Languages Teachers (CLTs) and instructors teach in these ‘margins.’ CLTs are a diverse and often invisible teacher group with unique experiences and support needs. Community Languages Teachers bring diverse educational, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds to their work and routinely face novel and complex challenges with physical classrooms, informal learning spaces, curriculum materials and differentiation strategies needed for multi-level classes. In this paper we present an overview of a four-year longitudinal study representing 98 CLTs who developed action research projects as part of a 10-week Methodology course. With ethical approval and participant agreement, we analysed these projects. We focused on how the CLTs made visible the challenges that they encountered teaching in community languages schools and captured and their creative and aspirational solutions for teaching and learning.
The concept of Heritage Language (HL) is not new. It arose in Canada in the 1980s, and it has increased in visibility in the last 35 years. Heritage languages, in their most common definition, characterize a minority language associated with the presence of immigrant/refugee/foreign communities in a majority host society. Additionally, HL are better known as immigrants’ languages (García, 2005), the language of the community (Melo-Pfeifer & Schmidt) or even ethnic and minority languages (Valdés, 2005). These designations carry a certain derogatory connotation, with strong implications at the level of its transmission, maintenance, legitimacy and interaction with the host language (García, 2005).
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedEmpirical study: research questions, methodology and context of study
Research question: What are the challenges of community languages teachers teaching their HL to children in Victoria Australia? The study is qualitative capturing the lived experiences of marginalised teachers using action research as a vehicle for the participants to document their main challenge in the classrooms where immigrant languages are taught. The theoretical model used was an Action Research structure adapted from Ferrance (2000) and Seberova and Malcik (2014).
Teachers proactively worked to address their challenge whilst simultaneously developing reflective practitioner skills..
Scope of the Study: 31 Languages, 98 teachers across Early Years, Primary (Elementary) and High Schools were participants in the study.
Methodology: The study draws on qualitative research which attempts to interpret and document phenomenon from an individual’s viewpoint or frame of reference (Creswell, 1998; Leininger, 1985; Mason, 2006). Greenhalgh and Taylor (1997) contended that researchers who employed qualitative research sought deeper truths while aiming “to study things in their natural setting, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings that people bring to them” (p. 740). The researchers used participatory action research (PAR) considered a subset of action research, which is best understood as the “systematic collection and analysis of data for the purpose of taking action and making change” by generating practical knowledge (Gillis & Jackson, 2002, p. 264). Ideally, the purpose of all action research is to impart social change, with a specific action (or actions) as the ultimate goal (Greenwood & Levin, 1998; McNiff & Whitehead, 2006).
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIt is important to understand how communities from a linguistic and cultural minority know, organise, use, recognize and value their HL and culture(s). It is relevant and essential to acknowledge the phenomenon of societal multilingualism (even if evidence exists that major European cities are essentially monolingual and monoglossic spaces), individual multilingualism and intercultural coexistence, as well as to reflect on the best ways to integrate these students.
Multilingualism is part of the very fabric of the European Union and, therefore, an essential component of any iteration of European identity. Europe’s linguistic diversity in multicultural Europe is a consequence of international migration and minorization. Multiple transnational identities and affiliations will ask for new competences of European citizens in the 21st century. These include the ability to deal with increasing cultural diversity and heterogeneity. Multilingualism can be considered as a core competence for such ability. In this context, processes of both convergence and divergence occur. Like Australia, Europe has a rich diversity of languages, illustrated by reference to the eleven national languages of the EU. However, similar to Australia there are many more languages spoken by the inhabitants of Europe such as Arabic and Turkish. These languages are usually referred to as ‘minority languages’, our research offers one example of how minorities can maintain and sustain their languages and cultures building a multilingual, multicultural society. There is a great need for educational policies in Europe that take new realities about transnational multiple identities and multilingualism into account. Processes of both convergence and divergence can be dealt with. The former relate in particular to the increasing status of English as lingua franca for international communication, the latter to the emergence of ‘new’ minority languages next to ‘old’ and established ones across Europe.
ReferencesCreswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five
traditions. Sage Publications.
Ferrance, E. (2000). Themes in education: Action research. Northeast and Islands Regional Educational Laboratory. www.lab.brown.edu.
Leininger, M. M. (1985). Qualitative research methods in nursing. Grune and Stratton.
Mason, L. (2006). Mixing Methods in a Qualitatively Driven Way. Qualitative Research, 6(1), 9-25.
García, O. (2005). Minority Language Education. In K. Brown (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (pp. 159-163). Elsevier.
Greenhalgh, T., & Taylor, R. (1997). Papers that go beyond numbers (qualitative research). British Medical Journal, 315, 740-743.
Gillis, A., & Jackson, W. (2002). Research methods for nurses: Methods and interpretation. F.A. Davis Company.
Greenwood, D. J., & Levin, M. (1998). Introduction to action research: Social research for social change. Sage.
Melo-Pfeifer, S., & Schmidt, A. (2012). Linking heritage language education and plurilingual repertoires development: A case study with Portuguese pupils in Germany. L1-Educational Studies in Language and Literature, 12, 1-30. http://l1.publication-archive.com/public?fn= document&id=2497&repository=1
McNiff, J., & Whitehead, J. (2006). All you need to know about action research. Sage.
Seberová, A., & Malčík, M. (2014). Information System “Diagnostic” as a Tool of Action Research. International Journal of Information and Communication Technologies in Education, 3(1), 57-65.
Valdés, G. (2005). Bilingualism, heritage language learners and SLA research: Opportunities lost or seized? The Modern Language Journal, 89(3), 410-426.
14. Communities, Families and Schooling in Educational Research
Paper
Common initiatives in French Elementary School: the issue of multilingualism
Frédéric Torterat1, Florence Guiraud1, Jérémi Sauvage2
1University of Montpellier, France; 2University Paul-Valery, France
Presenting Author: Torterat, Frédéric;
Guiraud, Florence
This contribution submits the first results of an ongoing project carried out in a mediterranean area of France (Sète, Occitanie), more particularly in neighborhoods where multilingualism constitutes a relevant issue of both educational research and training. By involving several communities with a view to promoting the development of plurilingual and intercultural competence (Cummins, 2000, 2001; Council of Europe, 2022), the project focuses on shared initiatives in the first level of elementary school. This period corresponds to a significant transition between nursery school (or kindergarten) and the cycle of "fundamental learnings" in the domain of Literacy (Myre-Bisaillon & Torterat, 2021). In a multilingual teaching context, these issues raise many questions in terms of basic skills, inclusion and common initiatives.
Our research-action relies on numerous works in didactics of languages and cultures (French and international), as well as on the recommendations of the Council of Europe dealing with the development of educational and linguistic practices (Council of Europe, 2001, 2007). Several of these works question the orientations consisting in cumulating monolingualisms in teaching situations. Despite the consequent contributions of the research in didactics of languages on plurilingualism, the implementation of such orientations continue to undermine the importance of Home Environment in Early Age for later Literacy Development.
Nonetheless in Europe, the needs identified in terms of the involvement of families and other stakeholders have been extensively documented. These stakes are clearly demonstrated in the FRA report (2021) of the Agency for Fundamental Rights, the Eurydice Key Data on Early Childhood Education and Care in Europe (2019), the EENEE Analytical Report, 32 (2018), as well as in the report ET2020 Working group Early Childhood Education and Care (2020) (Cf. Torterat, Azaoui & Ruprecht, 2022).
In the French elementary school context, the linguistic homogeneity of pupils is presented as a basic paradigm that prevails in the organization and structuring of teaching programs. However, in the classroom, the concreteness of the linguistic diversity of literacy learners appears to be a permanent challenge.
The specific issues of this empirical study have been identified as follows:
- to what extent can this kind of collaboration enable the linguistic security of plurilingual student-learners?
- how does it enhance the participants’ metalinguistic abilities of (re)analysis and comparison (Auger, 2005) between the languages?
- how do these sessions arouse an opening to the linguistic and cultural diversity, through the discovery of other graphemes, encoding systems, phonics/spelling correspondence of the different languages of the class?
This communication thus aims to provide the outcomes of the collaboration between all the stakeholders.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedAs suggested above, the French teachers cope with a doubly paradoxical situation. On the one hand, the official texts of the National Education (Official Bulletin n°11 of November 26, 2015) strongly point out that the linguistic skills in the "common" language is the priority, but also admit that school must welcome family cultures, alloglot contexts and multilingualism. On the other hand, even if that diversity is really accepted by the teaching teams, they do not have the training nor the props for a concrete implementation within the classes.
Specifically in elementary school, this linguistic diversity, which reflects the different life paths of the families, struggles to be a resource for reading-writing skills. It can even be perceived by some educators as an obstacle to an introduction into the written productions if the linguistic structure (phonological, lexical, syntactic) of the family language seems too far removed from French. The children intuitively make links between the school sphere in which they evolve and their social and family environment (Sauvage & Guiraud, 2015), but this is obviously not enough.
In the mediterranean context targeted, it appears that the multilingual skills can come into tension with the formalized academic language of the school. Our empirical approach thus reports on the observation of pedagogical sessions for learning of reading and writing, and establish to what extent the classroom can be an inhibiting environment for students whose first language is different from the French of schooling. This leads to the recognition of a real linguistic insecurity: inhibition, refusal to speak, self-deprecation of the first language.
Based on a sample of two classes including children (n=34) from vulnerable neighborhoods, our collaborative research involve trainers and teachers in the implementation of pedagogical workshops supervised by two research teams of Montpellier (LHUMAIN, on the issue of plurilingualism, and LIRDEF, on the learning processes. Cf. Torterat, Azaoui, Boutevin & Dupuy, 2020). These workshops consisted in several teaching sessions on reading and writing. These sessions involved teachers, researchers and parents, and attempted to implement a didactic continuum between family languages and the language of school, through the learners' inter-language synergies.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFollowing the conclusions of studies on language didactics (Heller, 1996; Gajo, 2001), the joint works have led to a reflection on the levers likely to strengthen intercomprehension (Auger, 2005, 2008). These workshops set up teaching situations in which languages other than French, spoken by students in regular classes, become an object of study and knowledge for students and teachers.
Implemented in a so-called "priority" area of the city of Sète (France, Hérault) during the years 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, the project has contributed to recognize parents as partners in a common initiative, by highlighting the different components of reading and writing acquisition as the result of complex processes in which diverse language repertoires can play a determining role. We expose to what extent such a global perspective of language behaviors may improve inclusion (Bronckart, 1997) around heterogeneous phonological, lexical and syntactic materials.
The results of the study also show how the family languages (or "heritage language" (Adissu, 2022) can meet the requirements of the school institution. At the same time, we discuss the implications of the workshops for the training of social work and education actors.
ReferencesAddisu-Miguel, V. (2022). Regard sociolinguistique sur les arts de faire d’élèves plurilingues en classe de français. Le français aujourd'hui, 217, 37-46. https://doi.org/10.3917/lfa.217.0037
Auger, N. (2005). Comparons nos langues. Démarche d’apprentissage du français auprès d’élèves nouvellement arrivés (DVD). Montpellier : Scérén-CRDP.
Auger, N. (2008). Favoriser le plurilinguisme pour aider à l’insertion scolaire et sociale des élèves nouvellement arrivés (ENA). Glottopol, 11, 126-137.
Auger, N. & Lepichon, E. (2021) Défis et richesses des classes multilingues. Edition ESF Sciences Humaines.
European Council (2007). De la diversité linguistique à l’éducation plurilingue : guide pour l’élaboration des politiques linguistiques éducatives en Europe. Strasbourg : Conseil de l’Europe.
Craciun, D. & Orosz, K. (2018). Benefits and Costs of Transnational Collaborative Partnerships in Higher Education. EENEE Analytical Report, 37 : http://www.education-economics.org/dms/EENEE/Analytical_Reports/EENEE_AR37.pdf
Council of Europe (2022). Recommendation on the importance of plurilingual and intercultural education for democratic culture.
Cummins, J. (2000). Language, Power and Pedagogy, Bilingual Children in the Crossfire, Multilingual Matters. Clevedon.
Cummins, J. (2001). La langue maternelle des enfants bilingues. Sprogforum, 19, 15-21.
European Commission, Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture (2021). Toolkit for inclusive early childhood education and care : providing high quality education and care to all young children, Publications Office, 2021, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2766/399018
Myre-Bisaillon J. & Torterat, F. (2021). Les Transitions du préscolaire au scolaire. Approches empiriques. L’Harmattan, collection “Enfance & Langages”.
Sauvage, J. (2015). L’acquisition du langage. Un système complexe. Louvain-La-Neuve: Academia.
Sauvage, J. & Billières, M. (éds.), (2019). Enseigner la phonétique d’une langue étrangère. Bilans et perspectives. Revue de Didactique des Langues et des Cultures (Cahiers de l’ACEDLE), 16(1). https://journals.openedition.org/rdlc/4219
Sauvage, J. (2014). Acquisition et didactique du Français langue seconde. Etudes de linguistique appliquée, 174, 156-166.
Sauvage, J. & Guiraud, F. (2015). Acquisition d’une récursivité syntaxique en français langue seconde.. Carnets d’Atelier de Sociolinguistique, 10, 103-116.
Torterat, F., Azaoui, B., Boutevin, Ch. & Dupuy, C. (2020). Une recherche collaborative en Réseau d’Éducation Prioritaire (REP), entre initiatives de terrain et reconfiguration du travail. Recherches & éducations. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rechercheseducations/7984 ; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rechercheseducations.7984
Torterat, F., Azaoui, B., Ruprecht, K. (2022). Collaborations in Early Childhood: Towards Other paradigms? . Lirdef (Proceeding n°1). 10.34745/numerev_1791
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