Linguistics and Education最新文献

Language and linguistic diversity play a key role in disparities in academic achievement. With around 25 % of preschool children in Australia communicating in a language other than English at home, developing a greater understanding of early childhood educators’ viewpoints towards, and engagement with, children's linguistic and cultural resources is vital. This research project asks how educators in early childhood settings view children's linguistic and cultural diversity. Employing Q methodology, the study investigated subjective viewpoints among educators at the early childhood level in Australia. Three distinct viewpoints were identified, shedding light on the complexities of language and culture related issues, as well as some of the challenges for EC educators in responding to the diverse needs of children. The findings reinforce the need for tailored pre-service and in-service professional learning that supports the development of teacher identity as well as their theoretical and pedagogical knowledge of multilingual language development.

Educators and researchers increasingly recognize the impact of teachers’ agency on language education policy enactment in their classrooms. The study is aimed to conduct cross-cultural comparisons of Israeli and Icelandic teachers regarding their agency towards linguistically and culturally diverse children in a preschool context. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 11 selected teachers who had rich pedagogical experience in educating children with immigrant background. In both countries, we found that teachers’ agency was expressed on continuums from teachers’ proactivity to teachers' passiveness regarding linguistically and culturally diverse teaching; from perception of home language as a resource to viewing it as a barrier to the child's progress in the societally dominant language; and from equal relationships to teacher-parents’ hierarchical relationships. Despite historical and socio-cultural differences between the two countries, we found striking similarities between the teachers in their reports on classroom management of diversity and interactions with children and families.

Languages are subjects in schools. Schools offer opportunities to learn and develop languages beyond the dominant language of instruction. In Germany, the Standing Conference of Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) defines the least common denominator in this regard. The article portrays the development of educational policy positioning on teaching of languages as subjects in Germany, using resolutions of the KMK and sketching current implementation in selected states. It is shown that while acknowledging multilingualism as a relevant feature of the population and appreciating it symbolically, teaching of languages as subjects is still dominated by a monolingual ideology. So far, school laws distinguish sharply between obligatory foreign languages relevant for school leaving certificates and heritage languages that can be developed voluntarily outside regular schedules with no or limited relevance. This begs the questions as to whether this divide is still adequate in a multilingual society.

The present special issue addresses transnational and translingual social practices in school contexts with a focus on tensions between discourse and practice in science, politics and education. The six contributions present conceptual and research developments and include current research projects, methodological and theoretical reflections as well as didactical implications

The present article explores how transnational practices are taken into account in regular and alternative schools. To answer this question, a study focusing on the online presence of all regular and alternative schools (n = 197) in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, was conducted. The data was analysed using methods of qualitative content analysis via deductive and inductive category formation. The categories were based on the theoretical framework of school theory according to Fend (2011), and school culture according to Helsper (2008a, b). The findings show that in alternative schools, more space emerges for transnational practices as distance from the regular German system grows. These institutions, increasingly in private ownership, explicitly ascribe themselves the competence to educate members of transnationally-orientated social groups without discrimination and while considering their group-specific migration experiences. Regular schools also offer programmes that aim to take into account the specific migration-related characteristics of their student bodies. However, the logic of internationalisation is argued less as an elitist strategy than as a way to compensate for disadvantages. The paper presents these transnational and translingual educational offers and discusses the respective strategies against a background of methodological challenges.

The UK, and perhaps particularly England, is often seen as a nation subscribing wholeheartedly to a monolingual mindset. The national curriculum remains resolutely monolingual, despite linguistic diversity in primary classrooms having increased rapidly. Current research and anecdotal evidence suggest that translanguaging in English schools is rare, despite the documented ‘multilingual turn’ in applied linguistics, and transnational practices are seen as being facilitated only within families. This study explores attitudes and practices towards supporting multilingualism and encouraging children's sense of transnationalism, rather than solely English language acquisition and assimilation into British culture. Forty semi-structured interviews were conducted with teachers across England, and the resultant transcriptions were analysed thematically to explore the experiences and attitudes of participants. The data presented in this paper focuses on instances of what we have termed ‘inert benevolence’ and we identify a number of conscious and subconscious barriers to truly incorporating languages beyond English in classroom practices.

In this commentary, I will draw together some of the most interesting points from the diverse papers assembled in this special issue and bring them into conversation with current research on language education policy and practice. I will focus on three key ideas that emerged from the theories, methodologies and data presented: (1) the complex hierarchisation of languages in national educational policies, (2) language and multilingualism in neoliberalising schools, and (3) relations between language education policy and practice. In concluding, I will make suggestions on how to support teachers in implementing transnational and translingual practices.

In this article, we explore how migrant families interpret their lives, their selves and their senses of belonging against the background of transnational work, education and language trajectories. Drawing on a biographical approach and interviews with three generations of the same Greek-German bilingual family, our results show the process of deinstitutionalisation of Greek language education across the generations, which is replaced by practices of ‘doing heritage’, i.e. forms of linguistic and cultural education in the private sphere of the family. While the orientation of the interview partner of the first generation is towards remigration to Greece, the interview partner of the second generation is closest to having developed a ‘transnational disposition of the mind’ (Casinader, 2018, p. 16). The interview partner of the third generation is oriented towards permanent settlement and career stability in Germany. These findings are discussed against the background of socio-historic relations between Germany and Greece.

The current study explored the longitudinal development of lexical cohesion for speakers of English as a foreign language (EFL) at the group level by employing Latent Class Growth Modelling (LCGM). A convenience sample of 276 university students from Southwest China were recruited and invited to write four argumentative essays over four months. Their essays formed a learner corpus, which was utilized to construct unconditional latent class growth models to explore the latent classes of EFL learners' development trajectories of lexical cohesion in their writing. Besides, conditional LCGM including logistic regression analysis was employed to investigate the effect of English proficiency on the classifications. The unconditional models demonstrated that there were different latent classes of development trajectories for local and global cohesion indices, which supports the heterogeneity of their development trajectories. Those models also revealed that two categories were the optimal ones for latent classes of development trajectories for selected local and global lexical cohesion indices. Additionally, logistic regression analyses showed that English proficiency affected latent classes of development trajectories of only one global cohesion index. The implications for EFL/L2 writing instruction and language development research are also discussed.

Drawing on a combined framework of raciolinguistics, imagined community, and language learner agency, this article presents an ethnographic case study exploring two Chinese queer immigrants’ English learning experiences embedded in dating relationships in Canada. Applying the theoretical construct of “intersectional highlighting”, I scrutinize critical events in which racial hierarchy intersects with gendered sexual values in key participants’ dating stories and further investigate how language leaner agency plays a key role in overcoming ideological constraints in English learning processes. Findings reflect performativity in language learning, highlighting the interplay between micro-level semiotic practices of learners’ doing and talking of identities and macro-level social structures of racial, gender, and sexual ideologies circulated in Canadian society. Further, I argue for a race-centered decolonial approach in the study of racialized queer immigrants’ English learning and propose pedagogical strategies to stimulate language learner agency assisting marginalized learners navigate disadvantageous discourses in and beyond second language classrooms.