Young children’s language-based agency in multilingual contexts in Luxembourg and Israel
-
Mila Schwartz
,
Claudine Kirsch
Abstract
Drawing on two longitudinal case-studies, this study aimed to identify some salient characteristics of the agentic behaviour of two young emergent multilinguals in two different multilingual contexts: Luxembourg and Israel. Despite the fact that the studies were conducted independently, the two cases were analysed together owing to the similarities in the research methods such as video-recorded observations, and semi-structured interviews with teachers and parents. The data were analysed through thematic and conversational analyses. Findings showed that a boy who learned Luxembourgish in Luxembourg and a girl who learned Hebrew in Israel, were outgoing and active learners who influenced their learning environment. We identified 10 types of agentic behaviour, including engaging in repetition after peers and the teacher, creatively producing language, translanguaging, and self-monitoring. Despite differences of the children’s sociocultural and linguistic backgrounds, and the language policies of their educational settings, we found a striking overlap in their language-based agentic behaviours. We suggest that the identified types can encourage further research in this field. Although our study with talkative children allowed us to observe many types of agentic behaviours, we cannot claim that less outgoing children or children who do not show the same behaviours do not have ways of expressing their agency.
Funding source: Project MuLiPEC (Developing multilingual pedagogies in early childhood), Luxembourg
Award Identifier / Grant number: FNR9989225]
Funding source: Ministry of National Education, Childhood and Youth, Luxembourg
Award Identifier / Grant number: SCRIPT_MuLiPEC
Acknowledgments
Concerning the first author, this work was supported by: (1) the Kindermissionswerk ‘Die Sternsinger’ e.V. and Abrahamszelt e.V. through Hand in Hand: Center to Jewish-Arab Education in Israel [Grant No. D 17 2321 001/1]; (2) The MOFET Institute, the Israeli national inter-collegial center to the research and development of programs in teacher education and teaching in the colleges. The project of Kirsch was supported by the National Research Fund under grant [C15/SC/9989225] and the Ministry of Education, Childhood and Youth under grant [MuLiPEC].
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© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Situated incidental vocabulary acquisition: The effects of in-class and out-of-class novel reading
- To translanguage or not to translanguage: Ideology, practice, and intersectional identities
- Psychotherapist’s empathic responses to client’s troubles telling/feelings talk in psychotherapy: A conversation analysis
- Refugees’ dehumanization in the Spanish media: A corpus-assisted study within the semantic preference framework
- Young children’s language-based agency in multilingual contexts in Luxembourg and Israel
- Effects of Group Dynamic Assessment on L2 Chinese learners’ literacy development: Learners’ responsiveness to interactive mediation
- Singular they in English as a foreign language
- Searching for the unit of meaning: Knowledge construction in university small group talk
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Research Articles
- Situated incidental vocabulary acquisition: The effects of in-class and out-of-class novel reading
- To translanguage or not to translanguage: Ideology, practice, and intersectional identities
- Psychotherapist’s empathic responses to client’s troubles telling/feelings talk in psychotherapy: A conversation analysis
- Refugees’ dehumanization in the Spanish media: A corpus-assisted study within the semantic preference framework
- Young children’s language-based agency in multilingual contexts in Luxembourg and Israel
- Effects of Group Dynamic Assessment on L2 Chinese learners’ literacy development: Learners’ responsiveness to interactive mediation
- Singular they in English as a foreign language
- Searching for the unit of meaning: Knowledge construction in university small group talk
