Andrew Hancock

Attitudes and Approaches to Literacy in Scottish Chinese Families

This study investigates the attitudes and approaches to literacy in the homes of eight Chinese families settled in a region of Central Scotland. The Chinese parents in the study were interviewed at home, using the assistance of a bilingual teacher. The findings indicate that the Chinese parents have varied educational backgrounds and linguistic profiles. Almost all the families do, however, have a commitment to maintaining Chinese literacy skills and are supporting their children at home in developing these skills. What also emerged from the investigation was that acquiring Chinese literacy was perceived by the parents to be linked with the transmission of traditional Chinese cultural values. The study revealed that some parents searched for innovative approaches in their teaching of Chinese characters to their children, whilst approaches adopted by other parents were more influenced by the process of reading and writing Chinese they had experienced within their own formal education. The findings indicate that strategies need to be developed and implemented in order to enhance the dialogue between Chinese parents and schools. Finally, further implications of the findings for educational policy and practice in Scotland are discussed.

Unpacking mundane practices: children's experiences of learning literacy at a Chinese complementary school in Scotland

This article builds on the growing research interest in complementary schooling in England and internationally but a field of study less well trodden in Scotland. It takes a socio-cultural view of literacy learning and demonstrates how in a Chinese complementary school in central Scotland, spaces are created for children of primary-school age to participate in multifarious literacy practices. Drawing on observations of three classrooms, supported by interviews with teachers and conversations with children, it is argued that there is a need to re-examine the assumption of mundane pedagogical practices frequently associated with learning Chinese literacy. It illustrates how activities around reading and writing are often not only a product of the teachers’ own experiences of education but are also influenced by the children, who draw on a range of bilingual and biliterate resources at their disposal. Furthermore, the study highlights the need for further research in the Scottish context to investigate how childrens engagement with diverse literacies helps shape their emerging and dynamic learner identities.

Commentary on ‘Practices’

There has been a trend over recent years for Singapore to act as a magnet for sojourns from international policymakers and politicians. These sojourns attempt to learn from classroom practices as a result of Singapore’s high educational performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranking. The focus of these visits from the perspective of the United Kingdom (UK) is on attainment in prestigious subjects such as Maths and Science and not on Singapore’s enlightened quadrilingual language policy. Therefore, the focus in this section on the details of classroom discourse and analysis of practice provides a welcome insight behind the facade of an educational ‘success’ story. At the same time, concerns about high-stakes testing, rote learning, learners’ lack of creativity and independent thinking have seen the East looking to the West for guidance on educational practices (Zhao, G. (2013). Rebuilding the Chinese soul: Some considerations for education. Frontiers of Education in China, 8(4), 498–517). The four chapters in this section address pedagogical practices in primary classrooms. The authors employ a variety of research methodologies and cover the themes of children’s engagement in reading, teaching morphological awareness, similarities and differences in teaching languages and the transmission of Chinese culture in Chinese language lessons.

Creating a dialogic space for research: a reading conference in a Chinese complementary school

ABSTRACT This article draws on research carried out in a Chinese complementary school in Scotland. The research focused on childrens experience of learning to read Chinese and on the strategies that they used to support their learning. Here, I provide an account of one particular aspect of this research, namely the creation of a dialogic space for gathering and interpreting data through the setting up of six reading conferences between individual students and their teacher. The reading conferences involved two broad activities. First, each child was asked to read aloud a passage written in Chinese. This was followed by a think-aloud session which took the form of a three-way dialogue between the child, the teacher and me (as the researcher). In this article, I show how the reading conferences unfolded by drawing on one example of an eight-year old boy of Hong Kong heritage. I also detail some of the insights into his learning strategies that emerged from the three-way dialogue during the think-aloud sessions. The article concludes with reflection on: (1) the particular advantages that accrue from creating such dialogic spaces for research, especially at the stage of data interpretation; and (2) on the value of dialogic methodology in educational settings characterised by considerable linguistic and cultural diversity.