Identity and the Young English Language Learner (Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 36) - Softcover

Day, Elaine Mellen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853595977 ISBN 13: 9781853595974

Verlag: Multilingual Matters, 2002

Inhaltsangabe

This longitudinal, ethnographic case study examines the language socialization experiences of Hari, a Punjabi-speaking English language learner integrated in a mainstream kindergarten classroom in an urban area of British Columbia, Canada. The study uses sociocultural and critical/poststructural theoretical perspectives to explore the intimate connection between learning, identity and social membership in Hari's learning path. The book highlights the political and affective dynamics of classroom relationships and their unconscious as well as conscious dimensions and should be of interest to all researchers, students, and educators involved with minority language children in educational contexts.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Elaine Day is a Research Associate at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada). She is co-author of the book Studies in Immersion Education published by Multilingual Matters. Currently she is studying the language socialization experiences of minority language and French immersion children in late elementary school and is a member of the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network.

Elaine Day is a Research Associate at Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada). She is co-author of the book Studies in Immersion Education published by Multilingual Matters. Currently she is studying the language socialization experiences of minority language and French immersion children in late elementary school and is a member of the Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network.

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Identity and the Young English Language Learner

By Elaine Mellen Day

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2002 Elaine Mellen Day
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-85359-597-4

Contents

Acknowledgments, vii, 
1 Introduction, 1, 
2 Theory and Literature, 8, 
3 Methodology, 28, 
4 Hari: His School, Teacher and Classroom and Language at Home and at School, 35, 
5 Hari and his Classmates, 55, 
6 Hari and Casey, a Newcomer, 73, 
7 Hari and his Teacher, 90, 
8 Conclusions, 108, 
References, 117, 
Appendix: Transcription Conventions, 128, 
Index, 130, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

In recent years, there has been increasing discussion of the need for the researcher to be reflexive, to declare her investment and interest in the research. The researcher's personal biography cannot remain disassociated from the research; the period in which that research takes place, the researcher's social location and her access to theories play key roles in motivating and framing the research (Skeggs, 1995). Hence, I begin this work with a brief personal introduction.

I am the child of Greek parents who immigrated from Greece to the United States before World War II and settled in the city of Boston in the north-eastern United States. Greek was the language we spoke at home. I do not know whether I would have been classified as an 'ESL child' in the sense of knowing little English upon entering kindergarten. I do not think so, as I had older siblings who spoke English; however, I certainly would have been classified as a 'minority language child'; that is, a child coming from a home in which the family used a language other than English.

My learning our home language, Greek, was very important to my family. Hence, during the elementary school years I attended Greek school twice a week after school. Religion also played an important part in our lives, and I attended church and Sunday school weekly at the Greek Orthodox Church. This situation meant that I had at least three peer social networks, two of which (Greek and Sunday school) overlapped, and one of which (the public school) did not.

I remember as far back as my kindergarten days sensing that there were differences between my family and those of my classmates, most of whom were Irish Catholic. Although we sometimes played in one another's homes, where whatever differences existed might have become obvious, I can remember being careful to hide some aspects of my Greek identity from my 'American school' friends. I would not, for example, tell them that I spoke Greek or went to Greek school, and I managed to escape (a verb that describes my feelings at the time) doing so until I was about ten years old.

At that age, four or five of my 'American school' friends and I had decided to form a club which would meet weekly in our homes. One of the two meeting days proposed was a Greek school day; I remember struggling over whether I should tell my friends the real reason I could not meet on that day or whether I should make up some excuse. I decided on the former and came later to look on this act of identity as a critical turning point in my life.

Like most North American school children, I did not receive in elementary school any encouragement or praise for learning my home language. Gutierrez and Larson's (1994) description of Latino children in California leaving their 'maletas' behind when they entered school accords with my own experience. However, in my secondary school, an academically oriented girls' school drawing from the entire urban population and therefore quite diverse in terms of the students' sociocultural backgrounds, some of my teachers positively reinforced those of us who came from immigrant backgrounds and could speak other languages. I remember liking this at the time and I think that this positive recognition made a difference to my perceptions of who I was.

Not until I carried out the observations for the present study of English language learners had I ever personally questioned or confronted the fact that my home language and bilingual skills were not recognized in my elementary school years. One day at around the time of Chinese New Year, one little girl from a Chinese home background had drawn two Chinese characters, which the teacher posted on the bulletin board. I wrote in my field notes and explored in my journal:

Sarah so pleased about her Chinese characters. My moment of consciousness! I was so pleased with the recognition we got in high school about speaking our home languages. But now I see: No one ever recognized in elementary school that I could write Greek! (February 1997).

Bourdieu (1991) uses the term 'symbolic domination' to refer to 'the ability of certain social groups to maintain control over others by establishing their view of reality and their cultural practices as the most valued, and, perhaps more importantly, as the norm' (Heller, 1995: 373). The neglect and denial of children's home languages was and continues to be a very emotional issue for me. Perhaps because I was afraid that my emotions would intrude too much, I did not take up the issue of home language recognition fully in this work, though I have done so elsewhere (Dagenais & Day, 1998, 1999).

I have always loved languages and studied them avidly, both at school and through self-study and travel. As an undergraduate at Harvard-Radcliffe, I majored in Ancient Greek and Latin and then taught Latin and English in secondary school in Massachusetts. When I later moved to British Columbia, I did a Master's degree in French linguistics at Simon Fraser University and also taught French there. Out of personal background and interest, I have always believed in the benefits of learning languages and have had an enduring interest in and commitment to second language education, in my personal life, as an advocate in my own community, and in my professional life, a large part of which has been devoted to research into French immersion education.

Starting in the late 1970s and continuing until the early 1990s, I worked in a research unit devoted to French language education, based at Simon Fraser University. There, I collaborated with my colleague, Stan Shapson, and others on a wide variety of studies on French immersion, covering the areas of evaluation and assessment, curriculum and instruction, and teacher education. Much of our work was for school districts and government agencies in the days when the Canadian French immersion program was experimental and when bilingualism carried negative associations in the eyes of the general public. My experience in this context was with research as practice, in that the questions we asked were to a certain extent determined by and accountable to a whole network of groups and individuals, both in the public at large and in the educational system, who were concerned with determining the French immersion program's effectiveness, its suitability for different students, and areas where it needed change and improvement.

We used a range of research methodologies and approaches, including experimental, survey, case study, and other qualitative approaches (see Day & Shapson, 1996). As Cumming (1994) points out:

decisions to utilize any one research orientation ... pose a unique, contextually based set of decisions requiring careful consideration of the orientation to research itself, the situation and resources at hand, and the purposes to be achieved (p. 697).

Through work in French immersion teacher education, in particular, I became more familiar with...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Multilingual Matters
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2002
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1853595977
• ISBN 13: 9781853595974
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 144
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar