Interconnecting Worlds : Teacher Partnerships for Bilingual Learning

Des mondes interdépendants : Partenariats d'enseignants pour un apprentissage bilingue.

Conférence de Charmian Kenner, Professeure des universités en sciences de l'éducation à Goldsmiths, Université de Londres

• Voir la conférence

• Abstract :

International research demonstrates that being bilingual brings cognitive and cultural advantages. Teachers therefore need to show support for children’s development of home languages (langues d’origine) as well as helping them learn the classroom language. First it is important to find out about children’s learning outside school. Children may be learning home languages with their families or by attending complementary classes (community-run language classes after school or at weekends, or ELCO= enseignement des langues et cultures d’origine classes on school premises during or after the school day). Such classes support literacy learning, and often mathematics, history and geography too, and the concepts children learn in their home language transfer to their learning in primary or secondary school. Children are also able to develop multilingual identities in these contexts, which contributes to their self-esteem and helps them feel more confident as learners. Research in the UK has found that children who attend complementary classes achieve more highly at school than bilingual children who do not. Yet mainstream teachers are often unaware of their pupils’ other worlds, so the children’s bilingual identities and resources remain hidden or marginalised in school. Teachers can make links with complementary school educators as well as with parents to help develop children’s bilingual skills and enhance their educational achievement. Charmian Kenner will talk about her new book, Interconnecting Worlds, co-authored with Mahera Ruby, which presents an innovative action research project in east London where mainstream and complementary teachers worked together as equal partners to build rapport with pupils, help children become independent learners, create a learning community within the classroom and develop learning power by drawing on the multilingual resources of children and families.

Interconnecting Worlds: Teacher Partnerships for Bilingual Learning is published by Trentham Books, 2012. Charmian Kenner and Mahera Ruby work in the Department of Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. The research projects were funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and Paul Hamlyn Foundation, and conducted in collaboration with Eve Gregory and Salman Al-Azami

• Biographical details :

Charmian Kenner is Reader in Educational Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her research focuses on children’s bilingual development in home and community contexts, and how bilingual learning can be encouraged in schools. She has directed research projects on early biliteracy, intergenerational learning between young children and grandparents, and bilingual learning through partnerships between primary teachers and community language teachers. Her books include Home Pages: Literacy Links for Bilingual Children (Trentham, 2000), Becoming Biliterate: Young Children Learning Different Writing Systems (Trentham, 2004) and Interconnecting Worlds: Teacher Partnerships for Bilingual Learning (Trentham, 2012). She led an international seminar series resulting in the book Multilingual Europe: Diversity and Learning (Trentham, 2008).

• Webpages :

Publications and teaching resources developed by Charmian and colleagues at Goldsmiths can be found at:

http://www.gold.ac.uk/clcl/multilingual-learning/