Teaching and learning in a multilingual society: Classroom - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Teaching and learning in a multilingual society: Classroom experiences Professor Halla B. Holmarsdottir Lecture for the conference on Intercultural Communication in Educational Setting s, May 13, 2014 at Oslo and Akershus University College

Overview — Background — Explore definitions — Educational alternatives – the affects on teaching and learning — Importance of language and culture in our global village

Globalization — Brings about strong feelings (positive or negative) — Movement of people has implications for education — A desire for better economic conditions — The need for labour in many countries that are experiencing low birth-rates — A constant flow of refugees resulting from conflicts between groups — Oppression of one group by another — Ecological disasters

Globalization (condt.) — A consequences of population mobility – linguistic, cultural, racial, and religious diversity — Schools face a linguistically diverse student population — Policy decisions concerning the language of instruction — The nature of language interactions between students and teachers, students and students, and students and the language of the curricula

…a field of study and an emerging discipline whose major aim is to create equal educational opportunities for students from diverse racial, ethnic, social-class, and cultural groups. One of its important goals is to help all students to acquire the knowledge, attitudes, and skills needed to function effectively in a pluralistic democratic society and to interact, negotiate, and communicate with peoples from diverse groups in order to create a civic and moral community that works for the common good. Multicultural education not only draws content, concepts, paradigms, and theories from specialized interdisciplinary fields such as ethnic studies and women studies (and from history and the social and behavioural sciences), it also interrogates, challenges, and reinterprets content, concepts, and paradigms from the established disciplines. Multicultural education applies content from these fields and disciplines to pedagogy and curriculum development in educational settings (Banks & Banks, 1995: xi- xii).

Experiences of multilingual children in public education — Lost in translation – Eva Hoffman — Mi problema – Michele Serranos — Options available — Encourage foreign language learning — Protect the language resources of our minority groups

Assumptions — Schools alone never had and never will have the ability to meet the need of language minority students — Effective educational service must be designed to meet the particular needs of students, parents and community that are being served — Multilingualism is an important resource for nations

Defining terms — Language minority students (LM) – immigrants, refugees, long-term residents or indigenous language groups — Target, majority or dominant language – medium of instruction or language of host country (languages other than the child’s MT) — Bilingualism includes multilingualism (knowledge or use of more than one language)

Hornberger’s three basic models

Educational alternatives (Submersion) — LM students are placed in a classroom that uses the dominant language only for the entire school day — Teachers — Developing literacy skills and providing content knowledge is difficult — Little or no training to cope with new the new dimension — Students — Help with language acquisition, but may cause psychological problems

School was a nightmare. I dreaded going to school and facing my classmates and teacher. Every activity the class engaged in meant another exhibition of my incompetence. Each activity was another incidence for my peers to laugh and ridicule me with and for my teacher to stare hopelessly disappointed at me with [sic]. My self-image was a serious inferiority complex [sic]. I became frustrated at not being able to do anything right. I felt like giving up the entire mess (McKay, 1989:341).

Educational alternatives (Pull-out) — LM students given separate classes in the target language development for part of the day — Teachers — Need to provide students with additional support in content areas — Benefit – less time spent in developing students’ language skills — Students — Fall behind in content subjects — Feel stigmatized — Advantages – benefit from formal instruction, like the sanctuary and gain self-confidence

Educational alternatives (Language maintenance or language shelter) — LM students voluntarily chose to be taught through the medium of the mother tongue — Teachers — How and when to use different languages — Students — Not fall behind in their subjects — Contribute to self-esteem, become truly biliterate and achieve academically

…it is revealing that most minorities of this type, for example, the Swedish-speakers in Finland, Afrikaans- and English- speakers in South Africa, or Russian-speakers in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, are either former power minorities and/or are in a transitional phase where they have to accept the fact that they no longer have the power to impose their will on a numerical majority, but where they still have the power to organize their own children’s education through the medium of their own language (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000:601).

She was nearly 6 years older than me and had developed her language skills in Taiwan by being proficient in Chinese. I only knew a little Chinese and my language skills were underdeveloped. My sister had used her knowledge from Chinese as a references point from which to learn English, while I had no reference point from which to start. An analogy can be drawn between language skills and the swimming skills of my sister and me. My sister already knew how to float and she only needed to learn a few new movements to learn a new stroke. On the other hand, I couldn’t even float and yet my teachers wanted me to learn a new stroke. I was thrown into the swimming pool and I promptly sank (McKay, 1998:351).

Educational alternatives (Two-way bilingual or multilingual) — ML students and the LM students are placed in the same classroom with the goal of making them proficient in both languages — Teachers — Demands close cooperation between teacher and coordination of efforts — Tensions between staff from different ethnic backgrounds — Students — Different experiences for each language group — Social belief that multilingualism is beneficial for both groups

Some [groups] have recognized multilingual education as a means to make their own children bilingual and thereby improving opportunities for doing business, getting ahead, and maintaining privileges. Immersion programmes…and International Schools are examples of this approach. For other groups, multilingual education represents a means to better understanding of other ethnolinguistic groups with which they are in contact. Immersion programmes and, especially two-way programmes may have an element in this ‘integrative’ motivation. For others, such as threatened ethnolinguistic groups, multilingual education represents a means of linguistic survival…Yet another use of bilingual education has been the provision of education in the mother tongue to ethnolinguistic groups which had previously been excluded from equal educational opportunity. Again maintenance and two-way programmes belong in this category. Mother tongue medium education in some African countries might be considered a type of maintenance programme (Skutnabb-Kangas, 2000:623-24).

Assessing the benefits of educational programs — Focus on both academic achievement and on social benefits — Speed in acquiring a language vs. positive effects of programs — school retention, positive self-concepts, and lower absentee rates — Research on the social ramifications

Conclusion — Schools should — Build on the experience and knowledge that children bring to the classroom — Promote children’s abilities and talents — Destruction of language and culture in schools is counter-productive — A society with access to multilingual and multicultural resources is advantaged

The European Union is founded on ‘unity in diversity’: diversity of cultures, customs and beliefs – and of languages. Besides the 20 official languages [now 24 official and working languages] of the Union, there are 60 or so other indigenous languages and scores of non-indigenous languages spoken by immigrant communities. It is this diversity that makes the European Union what it is: not a ‘melting pot’ in which differences are rendered down, but a common home in which diversity is celebrated, and where our many mother tongues are a source of wealth and a bridge to greater solidarity and mutual understanding (European Union, 2005:2).

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