All the aspects discussed so far can have an impact on the cognitive development of any child. I now turn to particular issues that can affect bilingual children. As Cummins (1996, 2006) stressed, language is linked with cultural identity, and bilingual learning can increase the self-esteem of bilingual children which can in turn support educational achievement. Most of the studies investigating bilingual
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learning have been conducted in countries where there is mainstream bilingual education, and often with first-generation children. Educators including Edwards (1998) and Smyth (2003) have also recommended using the home language as a resource in schools that educate through the dominant language, to enable the children to build on their prior knowledge and have better access to the curriculum content. However, there is research indicating that bilingual children have additional issues that affect their development at school as learning at home is not taken into consideration. This is of key interest to me as all the children in my study were bilingual and my research sites include both the home and the school.
One such study that highlights some of these issues is an ethnographic study by Drury (2007). The findings provide significant insights into the experiences of three to four-year-old bilingual children as they begin school in three English nursery classes. Drury raises the issue of the difference between home and school, highlighting that there were important aspects of children’s learning that took place in the home which were still unrecognized in nursery school. Drury refers to these aspects as ‘invisible learning’ where, at home, the children were confident in their use of the two languages and constantly code-switching to gain control of situations involving adults as well as children. This work is relevant to my study as it provides a perspective on research on young bilingual learners and all those involved in education in multilingual environments.
Another aspect central to my study was to investigate the expectations teachers have of bilingual children and their experiences of learning in the home. In her study, Drury (2007) challenged teachers’ lack of expectations and highlighted the high aspiration of the parents. She suggested that home-school understandings can be developed through contact with children and their families. Part of what
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Drury (2007) tried to promote was for teachers to engage with children and their families more intimately and to utilise the bilingual teaching assistant as a mediator. As mentioned previously TA’s in classrooms are often present to support SEN children and often they are bilinguial. There has been recent studies into the roles of TA’s in classrooms and their impact on children’s learning (Radford et al, 2011; Blatchford et al, 2012) which suggests that there is a drift towards the TA’s becoming the main point of educators for the lower-achieving and SEN children leaving the classroom teacher to concentrate on teaching the rest of the class.
However, where new languages are concerned Drury identified that there was a vacuum in understanding among teachers of the role the TA’s and the role they can play as the mediators of the new language and culture in children’s development at school in a positive way. TA’s do provide encouragement which is valuable for potentially improving the motivation and confidence of vulnerable children, especially those who lack verbal confidence (Radford et al, 2011).
There have been a few action research studies where educators have employed bilingual learning strategies in the classroom (Sneddon, 1993; Kenner, 2000;
Gravelle, 2000, amongst others). Such studies have indicated that these bilingual approaches proved to stimulate children’s learning and the positive role the TA’s can play have been highlighted. Although the findings from research studies are positive, bilingual approaches have yet to be used on a wider scale in schools, particularly when it involves second and third-generation children who are seemingly doing well academically and are fluent speakers of English. In order to fill the gap in research on bilingual children and their language use between home and school, Kenner et al (2008) conducted an action research study with British Bangladeshi children in East London.
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Some of the previous studies mentioned above have predominantly highlighted the difficulties faced by first/second-generation children when entering schools without much knowledge of the new language and culture. The second and third-generation children in Kenner et al’s study, mostly fluent in English, aged from 7 to 11, were also attending after-school community classes where they studied Bengali, their mother tongue. This study investigated how the children at primary schools in East London would respond to using Bengali as well as English for learning in their classrooms where English is usually the only language.
Classroom teachers recognised the important roles the bilingual assistants played in the lives of bilingual children during this study. This encouraged the teachers to seek the help of bilingual assistants in their classrooms, and together with teachers from the children’s Bengali after-school classes they planned bilingual tasks in literacy and numeracy. They made these tasks relevant to the primary curriculum and also linked them to the children’s community class learning.
The findings from the research were very revealing. Although the children were fluent in English and were mostly high achievers, they considered their mother tongue to be a key aspect of their identities and wished to use Bengali and English for learning in the mainstream classroom. It was found that the bilingual activities enhanced the children’s learning. This was demonstrated when children identified that they could deal with particular concepts, such as metaphors, similes and mathematical concepts, by being able to use one language to aid understanding in another. The children’s ability to translate required reformulating ideas which enriched their learning. The findings also highlighted that children’s bilingualism led to heightened metalinguistic awareness, giving the children the chance to use and extend their bicultural knowledge. The study also revealed that unless children
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received the required support to develop their mother tongue, they were in danger of losing these skills and abilities.
The above studies by Drury (2007) and Kenner et al (2008) indicate the role that language may play in the lives of my participants who are also third-generation British Bangladeshi’s similar to the children in Kenner et al’s (2008) study, and bilingual as were Drury’s participants. In addition, Drury’s research shows how family interactions can support young children’s learning as it enhances their funds of knowledge. With regard to my study, it is likely that third-generation children are exposed to many intergenerational interactions where languages possibly play a key role, and I will address these issues in the next section about children’s learning in families across cultures.