one school, fifty-one languages: converting linguistic ... · 17 march 2017 university of...

17 March 2017

University of Strasbourg

One school, fifty-one languages: converting linguistic diversity

into educational capital

David Little Trinity College Dublin

with

Déirdre Kirwan Scoil Bhríde (Cailíní), Blanchardstown

17 March 2017


Overview •  Some background information •  The school in focus and its language policy •  Languages in classroom practice •  An emergent capacity for autonomous learning •  Some concluding reflections

17 March 2017


Some background information

17 March 2017


Immigration to Ireland •  2006 census: 10% of the population (4M+) from national

backgrounds other than Irish –  112,548 of UK origin –  307,185 classified as “EU”, “rest of Europe”, “Africa”, “Asia”, “America”,

“other nationalities”

•  Net migration in 2006 and 2007: around 70,000 •  Economic decline since 2008: significant decrease in net

migration •  2011 census: 17% of the population born outside Ireland

–  Recent demographic changes will not be reversed: large numbers of immigrants have settled and are raising families

–  DES’s Intercultural Education Strategy 2010−2015: “the recent profile of migrants is changing, with an increasing proportion in the 0−15 year old age category” (DES and OMI 2010: 5)

17 March 2017


Primary schooling in Ireland Structure •  Junior Infants (4.5+ years) •  Senior Infants (5.5+ years) •  First and Class (6+ years) •  Second Class (7+ years) •  Third Class (8+ years) •  Fourth Class (9+ years) •  Fifth Class (10+ years) •  Sixth Class (11+ years)

Curriculum •  English is the medium of

instruction in the great majority of schools

•  Irish is the obligatory second language of the curriculum from the beginning of schooling

•  In some schools a foreign language is learnt in Fifth and Sixth Class

17 March 2017


The school in focus and its language policy

17 March 2017


Scoil Bhríde (Cailíní), Blanchardstown •  Girls’ primary school in a western suburb of Dublin •  The school has about 320 pupils, almost 80% of whom have a

home language other than English or Irish •  Most of the 80% have little or no English when they start

school •  In 2015: 49 home languages in addition to English and Irish:

Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Bangla, Benin, Bosnian, Cantonese, Dari, Cebuano, Estonian, Foula, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Igbo, Ilonggo, Indonesian, Ishekiri, Italian, Kannada, Kinyarwanda, Konkani, Kurdish, Latvian, Lingala, Lithuanian, Malay, Malayalam, Mandarin, Marathi, Moldovan, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Shona, Slovakian, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, Tamil, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Visaya, Xhosa, Yoruba

17 March 2017


The challenge and goal of primary schooling •  The pedagogical challenge:

–  to present and process curriculum content in ways that are accessible to pupils from the perspective of their “action knowledge” (Barnes 1976)

•  The pedagogical goal: –  to help pupils convert “school knowledge” into “action knowledge”

•  For pupils whose home language is a version of the language of schooling, the conversion of “school knowledge” into “action knowledge” entails

–  extending their linguistic repertoire to meet the demands of a new environment –  learning to read and write –  learning the words and phrases that embody key curriculum concepts –  gradually mastering the registers and genres of academic language

•  Pupils from immigrant families face a much larger and more complex task because they have not acquired their “action knowledge” in a version of the language of schooling

17 March 2017


Scoil Bhríde’s response •  The school

–  rejects the commonsense view that pupils should speak only the language of schooling, if possible at home as well as at school

–  encourages pupils from immigrant families to use their home languages inside and outside the classroom as much as they like for whatever purposes seem appropriate

•  Reasons for this –  Creation of a genuinely inclusive environment: pupils will feel welcomed and safe if

they can express their full linguistic identity –  Moral consideration: to sever pupils from their home language would be to infringe

a basic human right –  Cognitive consideration: a pupil’s home language is her default cognitive tool

•  Strong emphasis on development of literacy skills in English, Irish, French and home languages

–  Cummins’s linguistic interdependence hypothesis (see e.g. Cummins 1981) –  Importance of strong school–home liaison

17 March 2017


Home languages and learner empowerment •  By encouraging pupils to use their home languages, the school

–  gives them a sense of security –  acknowledges their identity –  promotes their self-esteem –  enables them to take cognitive initiatives

•  By encouraging pupils to reflect on their home languages and to offer comparisons with English and Irish, the school –  empowers them: they alone can contribute information about and

comparisons with their home language –  enables them to externalize and communicate cognitive initiatives

•  On the basis of strong school–home liaison, the school fosters the development of integrated literate plurilingual repertoires

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Four pedagogical assumptions 1.  Pupils will learn most effectively if they are encouraged

to use all the languages at their disposal whenever and however they want to

2.  Even very young children can be trusted to know how to use their home language as a tool of learning

3.  The development of oral proficiency, literacy and language awareness is a complex process in which reading and writing support listening and speaking and vice versa

4.  Language awareness is a tool to support learning but also one of learning’s most valuable outcomes

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How the timetable works •  Schools are expected to create specific timetable slots for

English and Irish –  English: 4 hours per week in Junior and Senior Infants; 5 hours per week

thereafter –  Irish: 2.5 hours per week in Junior and Senior Infants; 3.5 hours per week

thereafter

•  In Fifth and Sixth Class Scoil Bhríde also includes a timetable slot for French –  Approximately one hour per week

•  The Primary School Curriculum expects schools to create links between the various subjects taught –  Scoil Bhríde does this by integrating English, Irish, home languages and

French in the delivery of curriculum content

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Languages in classroom practice

17 March 2017


How languages are used in the classroom •  English is the medium through which most other subjects are

taught and a subject in its own right •  In all classes time is devoted to Irish every day

–  Emphasis is placed on learning the language by using it –  From an early stage the same importance is attached to reading and

writing as to listening and speaking –  Teachers sometimes communicate with pupils in Irish outside the

classroom

•  From the beginning immigrant pupils are encouraged to –  use their home languages when playing classroom games –  share with their classmates home-language words for key concepts

(colours, numbers, etc.) –  make connections between their home language, English and Irish

17 March 2017


Making connections between languages •  Octopus has eight tentacles ← Romanian pupil noted that

“ocht” in Irish means “eight” •  Decimal has something to do with ten ← Irish pupil

reminded of the Irish for “ten”: “deich” •  Hippopotamus means “river horse” − sentence used for

handwriting practice → Romanian pupil offered “hipopotam”, which prompted contributions from speakers of Urdu, Polish and Lithuanian

•  Teacher asked pupils to find out the name of the composer of The Blue Danube → several days later two pupils, of Ukrainian and Filipino origin, produced the results of their collaborative research

17 March 2017


Plurilingual literacy: some examples •  From an early age pupils write “identity texts” in English

and their home language •  Irish pupils write dual-language texts treating Irish as their

home language •  As immigrant pupils become proficient in writing English,

Irish and their home language, Irish pupils get help from their family or neighbours to produce texts in a language other than English or Irish

•  The Sixth Class fashion show and its two requirements: –  All languages present in the class must be used in the show –  Each pupil must invent a model and write a first-person text about her in

English, Irish, French (learnt in Fifth and Sixth Class) and home language

17 March 2017


An emergent capacity for autonomous learning

17 March 2017


Six examples 1.  Second Class pupils (7–8 years old) decided to translate the chorus

of “It’s a small world” into the 11 home languages in their class 2.  A Third Class pupil from a Filipino family wrote her dog Oliver’s diary

in Irish 3.  Pupils often write stories in their spare time, in English, Irish and their

home language 4.  Pupils’ highly developed language awareness sometimes prompts

them to write texts of an exploratory nature 5.  Two Sixth Class pupils, one from a Polish and the other from a

Ukrainian family, spent their lunch break writing a shopping sketch to demonstrate intercomprehension between their two languages

6.  Another Sixth Class pupil from a Nigerian family taught herself Spanish using books she found in the school library and resources from the Internet

17 March 2017


Some concluding reflections

17 March 2017


Learning outcomes •  Thanks to the strong emphasis on writing, pupils develop

high levels of age-appropriate literacy in English, Irish, home languages and French

•  Their achievement in Irish is unusual for its range, confidence and fluency

•  Pupils also acquire unusually high levels of metalinguistic awareness

•  In the standardized tests that pupils take each year from First Class (6–7 years) to Sixth Class (11–12 years), the school performs consistently at or above the national average

17 March 2017


So what makes the difference? •  From the beginning immigrant pupils’ capacity for

autonomous learning is exploited by encouraging them to –  use their home languages as a cognitive tool –  make connections between their home languages, English, Irish and (in

due course) French –  this “infects” Irish pupils whose home language is English

•  The teachers interest in collecting samples of plurilingual work encourages pupils to write stories and other texts in their free time and present them for approval

•  In this way pupils become involved in “exploratory practice” (Allwright 2003), which helps them to develop a critical interest in their own learning

•  In a word, the pupils become highly autonomous

17 March 2017


And yet •  Scoil Bhríde does not set out explicitly to develop pupils’ capacity for

autonomous learning •  That capacity emerges because pupils are well taught in ways that

take account of the fundamental principles that underpin the primary curriculum:

–  “the child is an active agent in his or her learning” (Government of Ireland 1999: 8) –  “the child’s existing knowledge and experience form the basis for learning” (ibid.) –  “collaborative learning should feature in the learning process” (ibid.: 9) –  “parents are the child’s primary educators, and the life of the home is the most

potent factor in his or her development during the primary school years” (ibid.: 24)

•  This implies that learner autonomy can play a central role in mainstream education provided that the pedagogical approach acknowledges learners’ identity and exploits their “action knowledge”, which in the case of immigrant pupils means their home languages

17 March 2017


References Allwright, D. 2003. Exploratory Practice: Rethinking practitioner

research in language teaching. Language Teaching Research 7(2): 113–141.

Barnes, D. 1976. From communication to curriculum. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

Cummins, J. 1981. The role of primary language development in promoting educational success for language minority students. In California State Department of Education (ed.), Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical framework, 3–49. Los Angeles: California State University, Evaluation, Dissemination and Assessment Center.

Government of Ireland. 1999. Primary school curriculum: Introduction / Curaclam na Bunscoile: Réamhrá. Dublin: Stationery Office.

one school, fifty-one languages: converting linguistic ... · 17 march 2017 university of...

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