Roumiana Ilieva

Do You Know Your Language? How Teachers of Punjabi and Chinese Ancestries Construct Their Family Languages in Their Personal and Professional Lives

This study focuses on how teachers of minority ancestries construct and represent their family language identities. Drawing on poststructural (Hall, 1996; Norton, 2000), postcolonial (Ang, 1994; Luke & Luke, 2000) and sociocultural (Holland, Lachicotte, Skinner, & Cain, 1998) theory on culture, identity, and language we explore the complex nature of the linguistic identities of 25 teachers of Chinese and 20 teachers of Punjabi ancestries. We consider the different ways in which respondents of these ancestries represented their identities in minority languages in various sociocultural settings and the implications of these representations for employment. Accounting for this diversity should contribute to reconstructing authoritative discourses (Bakhtin, 1981) regarding employment of racial minorities in public education and thus to making mainstream institutions more equitable and inclusive.

A Secondary School Career Education Program for ESL Students

Abstract Using Bourdieu’s theory of different types of capital and social “fields,” this paper analyzes one curriculum model, the ESL Co-op program, which is designed to meet the needs of immigrant adolescents who are primarily dependent on their first language. The program couples instruction in English as a second language (ESL) with work experience. ESL Co-op is offered in two secondary schools in a suburban Vancouver school district that is the most rapidly growing district in British Columbia. More than 30 percent of the approximately 50,000 students enrolled in the district speak a language other than, or in addition to, English in the home. A collaborative team of university researchers and district curriculum consultants inquired into the program’s success in helping recent immigrant students become aware of possible future career and job opportunities and any other aspects of the program’s operation deemed salient by the interviewees. We wondered if the folk theory of success embedded in federal, provincial, and district policy discourse, which emphasizes work experience, was in fact setting the stage for educational and occupational success of these young people. Interviews with 44 parents, 43 students, and six staff members from a total of 10 different language backgrounds revealed that staff perceive the program as a unique opportunity for students to gain exposure to Canadian work environments and to develop survival, language, and job-related skills or, in Bourdieu’s terms, embodied capital. Students’ and parents’ overriding concern is that the program precludes the possibility of graduation with the grade-12 diploma (institutional capital) available from the mainstream program.Using Bourdieu’s theory of different types of capital and social “fields,” this paper analyzes one curriculum model, the ESL Co-op program, which is designed to meet the needs of immigrant adolescents who are primarily dependent on their first language. The program couples instruction in English as a second language (ESL) with work experience. ESL Co-op is offered in two secondary schools in a suburban Vancouver school district that is the most rapidly growing district in British Columbia. More than 30 percent of the approximately 50,000 students enrolled in the district speak a language other than, or in addition to, English in the home. A collaborative team of university researchers and district curriculum consultants inquired into the program’s success in helping recent immigrant students become aware of possible future career and job opportunities and any other aspects of the program’s operation deemed salient by the interviewees. We wondered if the folk theory of success embedded in federal, provincial, and district policy discourse, which emphasizes work experience, was in fact setting the stage for educational and occupational success of these young people. Interviews with 44 parents, 43 students, and six staff members from a total of 10 different language backgrounds revealed that staff perceive the program as a unique opportunity for students to gain exposure to Canadian work environments and to develop survival, language, and job-related skills or, in Bourdieu’s terms, embodied capital. Students’ and parents’ overriding concern is that the program precludes the possibility of graduation with the grade-12 diploma (institutional capital) available from the mainstream program.

Becoming the “Good Teacher”

The possibilities for immigrant teachers to become recertified and find employment is an important concern for the diversification of the teaching profession in Canada and elsewhere in the face of social forces such as globalization and increased immigration. This chapter draws on a larger study that examined the recertification process of internationally educated teachers (IETs) in the contradictory space of Canadian multiculturalism as it played out in one of two teacher education programs in British Columbia (BC) which offer a designated track for IETs (Marom, 2016).

EAL in Public Schools in British Columbia: Reconsidering Policies and Practices in Light of Fraser's Social Justice Model

This article analyzes through the lens of Nancy Fraser’s (2008) multidimensional social justice model policies and practices currently guiding English as an additional language (EAL) education in public schools in British Columbia, Canada on the basis of research published in the last decade or so. It highlights directions which Fraser’s model guides us to explore in further depth in order to attend more adequately to the diverse linguistic, cultural, and integration needs of EAL students in the Metro Vancouver area. A continuous search for theoretical lenses allowing for more fine-grained analyses of challenges in educating diverse students would equip policy makers and practitioners alike with refined tools to engage more meaningfully with the complexities of diversities in the local contexts within which they work. KEywoRDS English as an Additional Language (EAL)/ESL, ESL in Public Education, ESL Policies and Practices, Nancy Fraser’s Social Justice Model and Language Diversity