Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen

Reading the World Through Words: Cultural Themes in Heritage Chinese Language Textbooks

This paper explores the social and cultural knowledge embedded in the textbooks for language and literacy education in a Chinese heritage language school, the Zhonguo School, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It examines how Chinese language arts textbooks introduce the child reader to cultural knowledge considered legitimate and valued in China as well as in Chinese diasporan communities. Furthermore, it looks at the construction of cultural knowledge in Chinese language textbooks in relation to the mainstream ideology to which immigrant children are exposed in and out of mainstream school classrooms. It looks at how the power relationship between legitimate cultural knowledge in majority and minority contexts is established and to what extent it affects language minority students’ literacy practices in mainstream school and heritage language school contexts. Data sources are the Chinese textbooks used from kindergarten to Grade 5 in a Chinese heritage language school.

Educational reforms, cultural clashes and classroom practices

This article presents an ongoing study of educational policy enactment in Singapore lower primary English classrooms. It explores how teachers react to and interpret educational reforms in their classroom practices against a backdrop of traditional cultural values. Using a prescribed coding scheme, the article presents the instructional organisational patterns and participation structures of the lessons. Through a systematic analysis of the enacted curricula, the paper examines classroom practices as well as teaching and learning activities in Primary 1 (7–8 years) and Primary 2 (8–9 years) English lessons in Singapore. The results suggest that there are cultural clashes between major educational reforms which emphasise independent/critical thinking and ‘Asian values’ which promote respect for authority and conformity.

New wine into old skins: the enactment of literacy policy in Singapore

To better comprehend how educational reforms and classroom practice interconnect, we need to understand the epistemic environments created for learning, as well as the pedagogical activities and the modes of classroom discourse related to these activities. This article examines how a particular innovation in English literacy, Strategies for English Language Learning and Reading (STELLAR), has been implemented in Singapore. Outlining the broader curriculum initiatives, current literacy policy landscape and pedagogical effect of classroom discourse, we look at how English language teachers in grades 1 and 2 interpret the STELLAR curriculum. Situated within the larger international zeal of educational reform, Singapore presents a rich case for the study of policy–pedagogy initiatives, literacy instruction and cultural values. Adding to the existing policy enactment research, this investigation provides an opportunity to probe both the prospects and limitations of policy implementation associated with centralised educational structures, examination-oriented systems and societal cultural frameworks.

Conflicting language ideologies and contradictory language practices in Singaporean multilingual families

ABSTRACT Informed by family language policy (FLP) as the theoretical framework, I illustrate in this paper how language ideologies can be incongruous and language policies can be conflicting through three multilingual families in Singapore representing three major ethnic groups – Chinese, Malay and Indian. By studying their family language audits, observing their language practices, and engaging in conversations about their language ideologies, I look at what these families do and do not do and what they claim to do and not to do. Data were collected over a period of 6 months with more than 700 minutes of recording of actual interactions. Analysis of the data reveals that language ideologies are ‘power-inflected’ and tend to become the source of educational and social tensions which in turn shape family language practices. In Singapore these tensions are illustrated by the bilingual policy recognising mother tongues (MTs) and English as official languages, and its educational policy establishing English as the medium of instruction. The view of English as having instrumental values and MTs as having cultural functions reveals that language choices and practices in family domains are value-laden in everyday interactions and explicitly negotiated and established through FLP.

Implicit learning and imperceptible influence: Syncretic literacy of multilingual Chinese children.

This article reports on an ethnographic study involving the literacy practices of two multilingual Chinese children from two similar yet different cultural and linguistic contexts: Montreal and Singapore. Using syncretism as a theoretical tool, this inquiry examines how family environment and support facilitate children’s process of becoming literate in multiple languages. Informed by sociocultural theory, the inquiry looks in particular at the role of grandparents in the syncretic literacy practices of children. Through comparative analysis, the study reveals similarities and differences that, when considered together, contribute to our understanding of multilingual children’s creative forms of learning with regard to their rich literacy resources in multiple languages, the imperceptible influences of mediators, various learning styles and syncretic literacy practices.

Planning for Development or Decline? Education Policy for Chinese Language in Singapore.

This article examines how political discourse, language ideologies, recent Chinese curriculum reforms, and their representations in the media are inextricably related. Using the Speak Mandarin Campaign as background for the inquiry, I focus on textual features of the various media sources, TV advertisements, campaign slogans, official speeches, and newspaper excerpts to illuminate the status and changing role of the Chinese language in Singapores sociocultural, economic, and political development. Using critical discourse analysis as an analytical framework, I examine the contradictory ideologies that underpin the governments language policies and planning activities. On the one hand, the government emphasizes the cultural and economic values of the Chinese language; on the other hand, government schools teach Chinese as a subject. In particular, the recent reforms in Chinese language curriculum have arguably further diluted the content of teaching. In addition I point out how conflicting ideologies behind language policies can lead to cultural confusion and educational uncertainty. These mixed messages make it difficult for schools to offer a consistent language education curriculum that will help students appreciate the value, be it economic, cultural or educational, of the Chinese language.

Negotiating Family Language Policy: Doing Homework

This chapter focuses on the process of negotiating family language policy (FLP) in face-to-face social interactions of bilingual English-Chinese families in Singapore. By observing and studying literacy events around daily homework routines, this chapter attempts to understand how FLP is established and realized in everyday interactional practices among family members. It further explores how parents, especially mothers, use different strategies deliberately or unintentionally to negotiate the ‘rules of speaking’ or ‘code of speaking’ in order to raise bilingual children in a multilingual society where English increasingly is gaining both political and social functions in public and private spheres. With focus on the micro-conversational sequences of homework talk, this study outlines the home linguistic environments that are either conducive or ineffective in language maintenance and bi/multilingual development in relation to the powerful macro sociopolitical forces. Through comparative analysis of three English-Chinese bilingual families, this study reveals the similarities and differences in the parental ideological positions as these are manifested in the parents’ various guiding strategies and different degrees of language control and involvement in their children homework sessions.

Nurturing bilingual learners: challenges and concerns in Singapore

ABSTRACT Singapore’s bilingual policy legitimises English not only as the language of governmental administration and interethnic communication, but also as the medium of instruction in all schools on all levels and across all subjects except mother tongues (MTs). As a result of these politics of language recognition, a visible shift has occurred in all ethnic groups away from MTs towards English. To rectify the language shift situation, the government has emphasised that developing bilingualism and raising bilingual children should begin in preschools. In this paper, we examine two top-down official documents: Review of Mother Tongue Languages Report, issued in 2011, and Nurturing Early Learners Framework for Mother Tongue Languages, developed in 2013. Attempting to identify some of the complex factors that influence language shift, we present an intertextual analysis of the Report and the curriculum Framework. In doing so, we compare the consistencies and locate the implicit inconsistencies in the policy position on bilingual education in preschools. We conclude the article by outlining the implications for changing the current bilingual educational models and providing teacher training programmes that maximise the learning opportunities of young bilingual learners.

Working Through the Layers: Curriculum Implementation in Language Education

This chapter presents findings on English Language instruction at the lower primary level in the context of policies for curricular innovation at national, school and classroom levels. The focus is on policies which connect national and school levels, and on how they might be interpreted when implemented in multiple schools within Singapore’s educational system. Referring to case studies in two schools and to individual lesson observations in 10 schools, we found much agreement with national policies in terms of curriculum (i.e. lesson content and activity selection), leading to great uniformity in the lessons taught by different teachers in different schools. In addition, we found that schools had an important mediating influence on implementation of national policies. However, adoptions and adaptations of policy innovations at the classroom level were somewhat superficial as they were more related to changes in educational facilities and procedures than in philosophies.

Language management in multilingual families:: Efforts, measures and challenges

With increased national and transnational migration in Europe in recent years where people move to different cities, cross borders, integrate into new culturallinguistic landscapes, form intermarriages and create multilingual families, Family Language Policy as a field of study has emerged and is now receiving considerable attention. Caregivers, parents, and society at large are more and more concerned about what language(s) should be used when raising children, what language(s) should be maintained and further developed, what kind of (socio)linguistic environment is conducive to learning more languages, and what literacy practices provide affordances and constraints for multilingual development. The theme and the title for this special issue of Multilingua stem from a thematic colloquium that we organized at the 21st Sociolinguistics Symposium in Murcia, Spain, in June 2016. It brings together four papers that respond to the challenges of family language policy as a result of the intensified urban development, socio-political changes and transnational movement that have taken place in different European countries. Many questions arise concerning language in contemporary multilingual, transnational families: If apparently adequate linguistic inputs are provided and linguistic environments are conducive, can we expect raising children in multiple languages to be an unproblematic endeavour? If literacy resources are rich and various measures are in place, could we not raise children with a desirable bi/multi-lingual outcome? This thematic issue answers these questions by addressing the particular topic of languagemanagement, that is, language efforts andmeasures provided by caregivers as well as the manner in which family members encounter and address challenges related to language learning and use. The notion of language management actually derives from the work of the Prague Linguistic Circle in the 1920s in which language was perceived as a self-contained linguistic production (Jernudd and Neustrupný 1987). According to Jernudd and Neustrupný (1987), language management starts