Family and Community Empowerment through Bilingual Education

Tuafuti, Patisepa; McCaffery, John

doi:10.1080/13670050508668625

Cited by 36 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Other US researchers have also found that dual immersion education results in above-average levels of academic proficiency and positive attitudes to the languages involved (Christian, 1996;Freeman, 1998;Lindholm-Leary, 2001;Potowski, 2007). French/English immersion education in Canada (Swain, 1998) and Welsh/English in Wales (Williams et al, 1996) have shown similarly positive results, as have programmes in Māori/English and Samoan/English in New Zealand (May et al, 2004;Tuafuti and McCaffery, 2005).…”

Section: Bilingual Learning: the Case For Further Investigationmentioning

confidence: 61%

Bilingual Learning for Second and Third Generation Children

Kenner

Gregory

Ruby

et al. 2008

Language, Culture and Curriculum

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Throughout the English-speaking world, children from bilingual backgrounds are being educated in mainstream classrooms where they have little or no opportunity to use their mother tongue. Second and third generation children, in particular, are assumed to be learning sufficiently through English only. This study investigated how British Bangladeshi children, learning Bengali in after-school classes but mostly more fluent in English than in their mother tongue, responded when able to use their full language repertoire within the mainstream curriculum. Through action research with mainstream and community language class teachers, bilingual literacy and numeracy tasks were devised and carried out with pupils aged seven to eleven in two East London primary schools. The bilingual activities were videorecorded and analysed qualitatively to identify the strategies used. The following cognitive and cultural benefits of bilingual learning discovered by researchers in other contexts were also found to apply in this particular setting: conceptual transfer, enriched understanding through translation, metalinguistic awareness, bicultural knowledge and building bilingual learner identities. The findings suggest that second and third generation children should be enabled to learn bilingually, and appropriate strategies are put forward for use in the mainstream classroom.Keywords: England, Bengali, primary school, bilingual learning, cultural content, language and cognition IntroductionResearch on bilingual learning has demonstrated its cognitive and cultural benefits. However, studies have mostly been conducted in countries where there is mainstream bilingual education, and often with first generation children. This study set out to investigate how second and third generation British Bangladeshi children at primary schools in East London, where English is usually the only language in the classroom, would respond to using Bengali as well as English for learning. The participant children, aged from seven to eleven, were also studying Bengali at after-school community language classes, but were mostly more fluent in English than their mother tongue.

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Section: Bilingual Learning: the Case For Further Investigationmentioning

confidence: 61%

Bilingual Learning for Second and Third Generation Children

Kenner

Gregory

Ruby

et al. 2008

Language, Culture and Curriculum

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“…Tuafuti and McCaffery (2005) demonstrate that the involvement of families and communities is key to a collaborative empowerment approach, through their example of successful Samoan bilingual schooling in New Zealand. Links with community educators could also be of key importance, and we will now discuss the particular strengths of complementary schools as flexible spaces for developing children's learning.…”

Section: Implementing a Syncretic Curriculummentioning

confidence: 99%

Connecting children’s worlds: Creating a multilingual syncretic curriculum through partnership between complementary and mainstream schools

Kenner

Ruby

2012

Journal of Early Childhood Literacy

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2 Connecting children's worlds: creating a multilingual syncretic curriculum in partnership with complementary schools Abstract Children from minority language backgrounds have multiple sites of learning: home, community, mainstream school, and in some cases complementary school where they study their mother tongue after school or at weekends. However, due to the institutional constraints of an education system based on monolingual principles, mainstream teachers are often unaware of the contribution that complementary classes make to children's learning, or unsure of how to draw on their pupils' linguistic knowledge in the curriculum. Children's multilingual identities and their other worlds of learning therefore remain invisible in mainstream school. This paper describes an action research study with teachers from complementary and mainstream schools in East London, in which they jointly planned lessons around topics that were then taught in both settings. The complementary teachers brought a holistic perspective based in the linguistic and cultural knowledge of their communities, which enabled these resources to be brought into mainstream learning, thus creating a syncretic curriculum that led to an increase in agency of children and their families as well as teachers themselves. We argue that collaboration between complementary and mainstream teacher colleagues can play a crucial role in constructing a space for multilingual learning in a monolingualising society.

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“…The vision of the Samoan grandparents who had the idea of establishing the A'oga Fa'a Samoa centre, the language and cultural immersion policy at the centre, and local and international research findings on bilingualism, all support the importance of young children learning to communicate competently in their mother tongue or heritage language (Cummins, 1993;McCaffery & Tuafuti, 2001;Tuafuti & McCaffery, 2005).…”

Section: Concluding Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A large collection of research literature is available on the effectiveness of bilingual and immersion education (e.g., Baker, 2001;Cummins, 1993Cummins, , 1996May, Hill & Tiakiwai, 2004;McCaffery & Tuafuti, 1998, 2003Tuafuti & McCaffery, 2005). Cummins (1993) reports that early childhood education experience in the mother tongue lays a foundation for later academic and linguistic success.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%