ADMINISTRACIÓN LOCAL AYUNTAMIENTO DE BURGOS

As I have argued in the beginning of this section, a sociocultural perspective on learning stresses the importance of society and culture to learning and

development. In her third principle of learning, Nieto (2010) maintains that learning is affected by cultural differences on an individual level as well as through the values of that culture which need to be acknowledged by the

teacher in order to be aware of the children’s realities: individual, cultural, economic, social and political. Learning and development are embedded and situated within a cultural context. That is, learning and development vary from culture to culture and are neither represent a stable condition nor are they universal.

I have argued, when drawing on community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) or

funds of identity (Esteban-Guitart and Moll, 2014), that children are thereby

enabled to bring their prior knowledge and experiences to school, thus bringing home and school together as sites of learning. However, in multilingual and multicultural communities, experiences children have acquired previously in the home or their home cultural environment may deviate from the assumed

linguistic and cultural ideologies held by the dominant group. Cultures have different values, like stressing interdependence (for example the importance of a close and extended family as a supporting network) or independence (for example focusing on the self), and these values have implications for the children’s development and learning (Nieto, 2010). Indeed, it is also the

surrounding dominant culture which “influences how society is organized, how school curriculum is developed and how pedagogy and policy are implemented” (Yosso, 2005, p. 75). In other words, learning is influenced by both the culture cultivated at home and within the children’s communities and the culture surrounding their communities.

An insight from the work of complementary schools can also underline how learning is influenced by cultural differences. Drawing on the discussion in

voluntary schools. These provided language and cultural classes to the

diasporic community in various settings outside of the mainstream school which are referred to as complementary, supplementary, heritage language or

community schools. Referring to these schools as complementary schools highlights the “complementary function of these teaching and learning environments in relation to mainstream schools”, as has been discussed by Blackledge and Creese (2010, p. 47, italics in original).

Martin et al. (2007) suggests that complementary schools can be examples of a learning environment in which spontaneous and flexible language use is usually the norm. In other words, due to the lack of opportunities in mainstream

schools, in complementary schools multilingual language practices can be explored “for the development, maintenance or revitalisation of community languages” (Robertson, 2007, p. 60). It may be difficult to imagine alternatives to monolingual systems which is why I argue that examining how

complementary schools work and how children behave within them can provide us with a window into what is possible.

In Robertson’s (2006) study of five bilingual children learning to read in three different languages, she discusses that the reading practices of different

languages (here English in the mainstream school, Urdu in the complementary school and classical Arabic in Qur’anic classes) allows children to carefully negotiate their reading strategies for each language. In this way, Robertson maintains, children realise what counts in one language as proper reading might not apply for another, and in this way understand that literacies need to be approached differently for successful reading.

Further, an insight from Walter’s (2011; 2017) work on reading in different settings underlines how learning is influenced by cultural differences from a different perspective (which I have also addressed in the previous section). In her research on children learning to read, Walters (2011) discusses the different reading approaches of children in their faith setting and in mainstream school. While reading Arabic script in the mosque school involved reciting and letter- sound correspondence, reading English in the mainstream school meant to read for meaning. Although one pupil, Attar, was able to read sentences out loud and could pronounce the words clearly, he was, however not necessarily reading for meaning. This in turn made the teacher think of the pupil as an excellent reader, but, when he faced difficulties in completing reading comprehension tasks, he did not receive enough support, as the teacher thought he could complete the task. But not only did the teacher assume he was able to read for meaning due to his ability to read out loud, the teacher thought that when Attar did not complete the task he was “lazy” and “defiant” (Walters, 2011, p. 397). The teacher did not seem to be aware of the different kinds of reading across the two settings, which directly impacted the

children’s learning and educational achievement; this touches on what Gregory (2008, p. xiv, italics in original) refers to as an “assumed […]

monolingual mind”. In other words, neither the children’s knowledge and

experiences, as discussed in the previous section, nor how their learning is influenced by cultural differences has always been recognised by the teacher.

Another example of how the surrounding culture influences and impacts education is the handling of multilingualism and diversity in England’s

multilingual learners which homogenises a heterogenic group of learners and in fact imposes a monolingual school system, as has been argued in Chapter 2.

Another insight on how learning is influenced by cultural differences is a study by Kenner and Ruby (2012) on collaborations between mainstream and complementary school. They encouraged children to use their language and cultural resources in the mainstream classroom which empowered the children to become independent learners, furthering their multilingual learning.

Partnerships between mainstream schools and complementary schools may help to increase the support of multilingual learners. They also expose mainstream teachers to teaching and learning using multilingualism as a resource. Their research suggest that such collaboration could challenge institutional constraints and at the same time increased the agency of learners, the community and teachers. I argue that, from this perspective, complementary schools are a valuable contribution to mainstream schooling and that this

contribution should not be underestimated but, instead, enhanced and incorporated into the mainstream curriculum.

As part of my study, I am interested to see if and how the children’s learning is influenced by cultural and linguistic differences and how these then affect the children’s learning, especially in the foreign language classroom. I have briefly touched upon the importance of the context in which learning takes place, which will be discussed in what follows.