The Pedagogical Practices of an Immigrant Parent-Maintaining Heritage Language in the Home Context (original) (raw)
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2021
Global migration is increasingly driven by experiences of extreme social, political, economic, and environmental adversity (UNHCR, 2019)-experiences which become part of families' personal and cultural narratives. However, such narratives are routinely marginalized in formal learning contexts (e.g., Campano, 2007; Marshall & Toohey, 2010), even though they may constitute a key part of students' identities and connection to the language/s and culture/s of their heritage (Avineri, 2019; Becker, 2013, 2014). In recent decades, modern language education scholars have begun to call for the more explicit integration of historical and political knowledge when conceptualizing culture in language teaching (Byram & Kramsch, 2008; Freadman, 2014), but it appears that the field of heritage language education has yet to enter these conversations. Guided by theories of language socialization (Ochs & Schieffelin, 1984, 2017), syncretic literacy (e.g., Duranti & Ochs, 1996), and difficult knowledge (e.g., Pitt & Britzman, 2003), in this year-long ethnographic case study, I examined the language and literacy socialization of difficult cultural knowledge across three generations in one Chilean-Canadian family: the Calfus (pseudonym). The grandparents had come to Canada as refugees in the 1970s fleeing the Pinochet regime in Chile. Their grandchildren (ages 7 and 9) were learning their heritage language at home and in a Spanish-English bilingual program at school. I used thematic (Saldaña, 2013) and narrative (Ochs & Capps, 2001) methods to analyze data from multiple sources, including interviews, audio recordings, field notes, and photos of student work. I also examined how adults made use of IRE (initiation, response, evaluation) routines to manage difficult historical topics when talking with children. Overall, the analysis demonstrated the salience and significance of difficult cultural knowledge in the Calfu family's language and literacy socialization practices outside of school, the children's dynamic and shifting sense of iv imagined transnationalism, and the ways that Indigenous identities can be eclipsed by Hispanic identities in Spanish language programs (e.g., Calderón & Urrieta, 2019). Nevertheless, the children consistently demonstrated highly creative and agentive ways to claim authorship and ownership of their difficult cultural knowledge. The study has significant implications for teaching heritage language learners in post-exile contexts.
Frontiers in Psychology
This study delves into the heritage language experiences of Australian-born Chinese immigrant children under the framework of family language policy. Storytelling as a narrative inquiry method is used to reveal the lived experiences of the protagonists in relation to heritage language and culture. The three family stories involved for case studies reveal different levels of parent agency in Chinese immigrant families regarding their children’s home language use and heritage language education. It is noted that the level of child agency corresponds with the level of their parent agency. Where parents strongly advocate and practice heritage language maintenance, stronger agency is observed in their children to continue the use and learning of their heritage language. In addition, maintaining harmony while parents are implementing family language policies and providing children with formal instruction in heritage language are conducive to heritage language development, particularly in ...
This article argues for the value of heritage language programs and the micro-level language policies that support them, focusing on a case study of a program in the USA to make this argument. We also argue for the importance of recognizing students’ heritage languages, cultures, and individual goals and identities in mainstream school programs. Following an overview of the current status of heritage language programs, a program case study conducted at a public primary school in rural Oregon is presented. The strengths of the program are outlined, as well as its challenges, and the brief history of the program is traced from its establishment and success to its subsequent decline. Multiple factors are discussed, as are the positive effects on students’ identities and scores on state-level assessments during the existence of the program and the negative effects after the dismantling of the program. The article concludes with considerations for the establishment of successful heritage language programs, as well as the importance of establishing policies that invest in supporting heritage language speakers in their schools. Keywords: heritage language; micro-level language policy; case study; investment
THE PROCESS OF ACQUIRING THE HERITAGE OR HOME LANGUAGE BY CHILDREN IN IMMIGRANT FAMILIES
International Journal of Multilingual Education, by Akram Khosravi, 2021
In this study, we are researching the impact of immigration on acquiring the heritage language in Iranian immigrant families to Georgia whose children age was between 3 to 15 years. The methodology used in this research is a survey study in the Iranian community, and the results methodology is questionnaires. According to the answers and the independent variable which is immigration, the result has shown that Iranian immigrant families to Georgia try to keep their heritage language even though some families were multinational. People are immigrating in the 21st century more than ever. This result is that people are being separated from their mother tongue and joining a new world and language. One of the challenges people face is how to preserve their heritage language while it faces a variety of obstacles that may be lost by its speakers. In this research, we study the effects of immigration on language knowledge from each side in addition to find out how the immigrant family’s children acquire languages.
“Glued to the family”: The role of familism in heritage language development strategies - 2014
This article, part of a larger ethnographic study, examines how a family's affective ties to the country of origin and to relatives still residing there supported their Spanish language development and maintenance efforts in Vancouver, Canada. Drawing on data from participant observation and interviews, the article analyzes the parents' diverse heritage language development (HLD) strategies and ideologies and the children's affective connections to family members in Perú. The analysis draws attention to the positive implications of these factors for the success of the HLD activities in which the family members participated. The article concludes by highlighting the symbiotic nature of language socialization strategies, familism, and affective factors for HLD in this home. Implications for pedagogy, theory, and research are presented.
1995
Viewing from a distanceas a British social anthropologist and as a literacy researcherthe growth of interest in fami:; literacy in the United States (now being followed by the United Kingdom), there seem to me to have been two basic approaches or philosophies of education involved in the movement. One of these, and the dominant one until recently, has been the cultural deficit model; the other is the culturally sensitive model. Within the cultural deficit model, educators, politicians, programme directors, and fenders have seen the family, and links between generations in the family, as a way of achieving educational goals that schools were unable to achieve. At its most extreme, this involved using family literacy schemes to infuse school and middle-class val-I hope that it will receive wide attention and will help to connect not only generations but also cultures and classes in the diverse literacy environments we now inhabit.
This sociolinguistic study reveals some of the tensions surrounding transmission of heritage languages to U.S.-born children of two African immigrant families in the Midwestern region of the United States. Data collected from interviews , focus groups, and observations, indicated that all children had limited proficiency in their heritage languages despite all their parents having native speak-ers' competence in those languages. Findings suggest that gains made in the acquisition of heritage languages before the preschool years, at home, were lost as soon as children began going to preschool. Older siblings were also found to influence the linguistic environment in the home as they became more proficient in, and increased their use of English, thus reducing the use of heritage languages in the home. Further, the parents' frequent use of heritage languages to obscure meaning from their children during adult conversations was also observed among adults. This study has implications for immigrant parents who would like to see their children learn their heritage languages in the home.