Recognizing and leveraging the bilingual meaning-making potential of young people aged six to eight years old in one Australian classroom

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Although unevenly distributed, many Australian classrooms are increasingly diverse and include young people from a wide variety of cultural and linguistic backgrounds, young people who speak many different languages and dialects of English. These diverse classrooms offer rich and exciting teaching and learning opportunities and require innovative pedagogies that bolster the abilities of educators to draw upon young peoples' transcultural and translingual competencies. This paper details curricula and pedagogies employed in a classroom with six- to eight-year old children newly arrived in Australia. In this classroom, children were positioned as ethnographers of their own language practices; language repertoires were recognized, validated and treated as resources for learning. Analysis centres on the relevant connections made between academic content, children's experiences and the promotion of children's identities as bilingual meaning-makers.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)296-326
Number of pages31
JournalJournal of Early Childhood Literacy
Volume20
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020

Keywords

  • Australia
  • English language
  • bilingualism in children
  • early childhood education
  • multicultural education

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Recognizing and leveraging the bilingual meaning-making potential of young people aged six to eight years old in one Australian classroom'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this