Angela Creese

Multicultural, Heritage and Learner Identities in Complementary Schools

In this paper we look at three identity positions salient in research of young people studying in complementary schools in Leicester, a large linguistically and ethnically diverse city in the East Midlands, England. Our discussion of identity focuses on three identity positions: multicultural, heritage and learner. The first two of these are linked to discussions on ethnicity as a social category. We explore the fluidity and stability of ethnicity as a social description in interview transcripts of young people at complementary schools. In addition, the paper explores another, more emergent identity salient in the two schools, that of ‘learner identity’. The research can be characterised as adopting a linguistic ethnographic approach using a team of ethnographers. Data was collected for 20 weeks by four researchers and consists of fieldnotes, interviews and audio recordings of classroom interactions. We consider the importance of ambiguity and certainty in students’ conceptualisation of themselves around ethnicity and linguistic diversity and look at the institutional role complementary schools play in the production of these and successful learner identities. We explore how complementary schools privilege and encourage these particular identity positionings in their endorsement of flexible bilingualism. Overall, we argue that complementary schools allowed the children a safe haven for exploring ethnic and linguistic identities while producing opportunities for performing successful learner identity.

Heteroglossia as Practice and Pedagogy

This chapter introduces the notion of ‘heteroglossia’ as a means of expanding theoretical orientations to, and understandings of, linguistic diversity. The discussion responds to contemporary debates about multilingualism and proposes that Bakhtin’s concept of heteroglossia offers a lens through which to view the social, political, and historical implications of language in practice. The chapter refers to the rich theoretical and empirical contributions of the authors of the volume.

Managing Bilingual Interaction in a Gujarati Complementary School in Leicester

This paper focuses on teacher-student interaction in two Gujarati complementary school classrooms in one school in the East Midlands city of Leicester, UK. To date, little work has been published on interaction in complementary schools, and little is therefore known about the cultures of learning and teaching in such contexts. Our study of complementary schools in Leicester has shown how the classroom participants manage bilingualism and bilingual learning and teaching. One of the most noticeable features of the discourses of the two classrooms is the way two languages are juxtaposed to create learning opportunities. This uncontested use of two languages through the pedagogic strategy of code-switching goes against the perceived notion of bilingual learning/teaching as being a deficient strategy. Classrooms in complementary schools offer a highly significant, though under-researched, context in which to study language choice, and specifically the multilingual experiences of classroom participants. By exploring the educational pedagogies and classroom discourses, it is the aim of the paper to extend theoretical insights into the way complementary schools might help to transform, negotiate and manage the linguistic, social and learning identities of the participants in the classroom.

Linguistic Ethnography: Collecting, Analysing and Presenting Data

Ethnography and Language Linguistic Ethnography Data in Linguistic Ethnography Doing Research in Linguistic Ethnography: Building the Case Case study one: Reflexivity, voice and representation in linguistic ethnography Case study two: Researching feedback conferences in pre-service teacher training Case study three: Ethnography and the workplace Case study four: Ethnography, language and healthcare planning Practical Issues in Linguistic Ethnographic Research Empiricism, ethics and impact Transcription, translation and technology Writing up: genres, writer voice, audience Ways forward

Translanguaging and Identity in Educational Settings

ABSTRACT This article reviews recent scholarship in language, identity, and education. It critically reflects on developments in sociolinguistics as researchers have engaged with the dynamics and complexity of communication in superdiverse societies where people from an increased number of territories come into contact with one another, and where people have access to an increased range of online resources for communication. The authors focus in particular on recent scholarship on “translanguaging,” examining research that has viewed identities as socially constructed in interaction and considering the relationship between language and identities in contexts where communication is mobile and complex. This article offers a critical summary of the implications of these developments for education in the 21st century. In order to illustrate these theoretical points, the authors present an empirical example of the performance of language and identity in education from their recent research.

Fieldnotes in team ethnography: researching complementary schools

Ethnography has typically been seen as a singular research journey in which the lone researcher engages in the study of a community. However, increasingly within the social sciences, ethnographic research takes place in teams. This article explores the processes of using fieldnotes to develop team ethnography in a study of Gujarati complementary schools in a diverse English city. Complementary schools are also known as supplementary, heritage and community language schools. They are voluntary, usually run by local communities, and outside the state education sector. The article looks at how fieldnotes are used by researchers to constitute a team, contest interpretations and produce nuanced accounts of complementary schools. For the purpose of this article, a set of fieldnotes has been selected and presented as a case study to illustrate the role fieldnotes played in the team. The article explores their iterative use by the four-member team to settle upon particular research themes. We consider the role fieldnotes played in the teams reaching contested but shared accounts of social and linguistic action in one particular complementary school.

Meaning-Making as Dialogic Process: Official and Carnival Lives in the Language Classroom

This article adopts a Bakhtinian analysis to understand the complexities of discourse in language-learning classrooms. Drawing on empirical data from two of four linked case studies in a larger, ESRC-funded project, we argue that students learning in complementary (also known as community language, supplementary, or heritage language) schools create “second lives” in the classroom. They do this through the use of carnivalesque language, introducing new voices into classroom discourse, using mockery and parody to subvert tradition and authority, and engaging in the language of “grotesque realism.” Students use varieties of parodic language to mock their teacher, to mock each other, to mock notional students as second-language learners, and to mock their schools attempts to transmit reified versions of “cultural heritage.” These creative discourse strategies enable the students to create carnival lives in the classroom that provide alternatives to the official worlds of their teachers. In doing so the students are able to move in and out of official and carnival worlds, making meaning in discourse that is dialogic, as they represent themselves and others in voices that cut across boundaries in complex, creative, sophisticated ways.

Interaction in Complementary School Contexts: Developing Identities of Choice – An Introduction

The papers collected here are based on those presented at a colloquium entitled Interaction in Complementary School Contexts: Developing Identities of Choice at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 15 in Newcastle, April 2004. The colloquium was convened by the editors of this volume and Arvind Bhatt. The genesis for bringing together papers on complementary schools, a much under-researched area, was a project sponsored by the ESRC on Complementary Schools and their Communities in Leicester (Bhatt et al., 2004; Martin et al., 2004a, b).

Bilingual Teachers in Mainstream Secondary School Classrooms: Using Turkish for Curriculum Learning.

In England an inclusive language and educational policy is implemented which intends to give bilingual/EAL (English as an additional language) students access to a national curriculum studied by all students. Bilingual/EAL children are placed in English mainstream secondary school classrooms where their language and learning needs are to be met by a working partnership between the subject teacher and EAL teacher. The bulk of the language support in English schools is non-bilingual and is delivered in English. However, there is sizeable number of bilingual EAL teachers in Englands multilingual schools. The focus of this paper is an ethnographic study of six Turkish/English bilingual EAL teachers from three London secondary schools, using observations, interviews, classroom transcripts and government/school policy documents as data sources. The paper describes how bilingual EAL teachers work within secondary school subject discipline classrooms where the primary focus is curriculum learning. It shows these bilingual EAL teachers resisting the support role usually played by EAL teachers for a more traditional subject teacher role of transmitter and explainer of curriculum content. This decision to work within the dominant pedagogic framework of secondary schooling in effect keeps the bilingual/EAL teacher and children at the centre of classroom life.

Translanguaging and the body

ABSTRACT This article reports communicative interactions with a focus on the body as a dimension of the semiotic repertoire. The research context is a four-year, multi-site linguistic ethnography which investigates how people communicate in superdiverse cities in the UK. In the setting of a butcher’s stall in a city market we consider three interactions at a particular market stall between butchers and their customers. In the first, gesture is deployed as a resource by both an English butcher’s assistant and his customer. In the second, we examine the body as a resource in the semiotic repertoire of a Chinese butcher as he negotiates a faux haggling interaction with East European customers. In the third example, also recorded as field notes, a Chinese woman employs a ‘Chinese’ gesture to represent the number of pieces of offal she wishes to purchase from an English butcher’s assistant. Each of the examples was recorded during an extended period of ethnographic field work in Birmingham Bull Ring market. Through detailed analysis of these interactions we argue that when people’s biographical and linguistic histories barely overlap, they translanguage through the deployment of wide-ranging semiotic repertoires.