Abstract
The paper explores the involvement of teachers, children, and parents in a project based on learning a second language (L2) within a multicultural context. The study accounts for the participants’ transitions across school and family and aims to analyze their representations about the implementation and the adaptation of the project. The investigation involves three classes of primary schools—1st and 2nd levels—and two kindergarten classes, for a total of 15 teachers, 169 children aged 3–7 years old, and their families, living in French-speaking areas of Switzerland and representing 20 different nationalities. By combining different data sources (teachers’ and parents’ interviews, ethnographic observations of children’s activities), we explore how participants have implemented an educational program through various adaptations in their transition from a traditional way of teaching/learning L2 to a new model inspired by the Narrative Format. Through an inductive approach and a qualitative analysis of data, we present the main evidences of these transitions, detecting the conditions that facilitate the acquisition of languages and accounting for arguments connected to the heterogeneous, conditional, and context-dependent knowledge within and outside the school.
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Notes
We refer to the project “School and family together for the integration of immigrant children” (hereafter SOFT), n° 531,208-LLP-2012-IT-KA2-KA2MP—grant agreement: 4479-2012, Executive Agency of the European Commission for Education, Audiovisual and Culture, «European Union Lifelong Learning» program. For further details, see Author (Arcidiacono 2014; Padiglia & Arcidiacono 2015) and the project’s website (www.softintegration.eu).
Our project exceptionally involves pupils of third grade (6–7 years old) because some cantons, as Neuchâtel, have established special classes for earlier L2 teaching.
The Narrative Format is a psycholinguistic model of language education conceived by Taeschner (2005). It includes a series of educational activities and materials that create the appropriate conditions not only to learn a new language (Taeschner 2003; Taeschner et al. 2008), but also to facilitate good emotional relationships and communicative acts among speakers during interactions within and outside the classroom. The model is based on three assumptions: the possibility to learn a foreign language as we learn to speak a native language; the use of interactive ways of teaching in the language acquisition process; and the implementation of stories built on theatrical ways, with the support for gestures, mimic, and music (for further details, cf. Pirchio et al. 2014).
The University of Rome “Sapienza” (Italy); the University of Rome 3 (Italy); the Dinocroc International Training Institute in Rome (Italy); the Kommunalen Integrationszentren in Essen (Germany); the Escuela de Negocios y Administracion de Empresas in Barcelona (Spain); the University of Edinburgh (Scotland); the University of Teacher Education BEJUNE in Biel/Bienne (Switzerland).
Apart the group of Swiss children (n = 114), the represented nationalities of the non-Swiss participants (n = 55) in the classrooms we have observed are the following (by alphabetical order): Argentine, Chili, China, Croatia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Italy, Ivory Coast, Morocco, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam.
English has been chosen in order to propose the same new language to be learned by all pupils.
The immigrant population is composed by people who live in Switzerland, but were born in another country. It also involves children of refugee families or temporary employees (most building workers staying in Switzerland for a limited time).
For the present paper, only data connected to situations of “transition” have been taken into account. For this reason and for lack of space, we are not providing here a detailed view of all the data collected (in terms of frequencies, modalities, time, etc.). For further information, cf. the above-mentioned references connected to the research team.
Two researchers have independently selected the sequences until reaching a significant level of inter-rate agreement (Cohen’s kappa = .80; n = 3, value indicating the number of coding options, according to the levels taken into account for the present study).
In this paper, the excerpts are presented without particular symbols related to the transcription. Only contextual elements, added by the transcriber between brackets, are provided. Original data are in French.
A possible reconstruction of the arguments advanced by children (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004) should include a first standpoint (1) “I am going to take a light green pencil in order to draw the frog” and (1.1.) a causal argument (1.1) supporting this standpoint “There is not the dark green pencil in the glass”. However, the implicit reason indicating why the child has to use the light green pencil is related to the fact that they do not have a dark green pencil. The implicit argumentation of child 1 indicates a symptomatic relation (the dark green color is characteristic of a frog), suggesting, as reaction of child 2, a causal counter-argumentation: “You said that you will draw a frog (1.1a), but the frogs are not light green colored, they should be dark green colored” (1.1b). In order to defend the standpoint “You take the dark green pencil” (1), the arguments (1.1a) and (1.1b) have to be considered collectively, because (1.1a) is not sufficient to support the standpoint.
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Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the European Commission for the financial support and to the participant schools and families for their engagement. The present paper and its content remain under the responsibility of the authors.
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Francesco Arcidiacono. University of Teacher Education BEJUNE, Ch. De la Ciblerie 45, 2503 Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. E-mail: francesco.arcidiacono@hep-bejune.ch
Current themes of research:
Teacher education. Social interaction. Multicultural and multilingual education.
Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:
Arcidiacono, F., & Bova, A. (Eds.) (2017). Interpersonal Argumentation in Educational and Professional Contexts. New York: Springer.
Giglio, M., & Arcidiacono, F. (Eds.) (2017). Les interactions sociales en classe: réflexions et perspectives. Bern: Lang.
Bova, A., & Arcidiacono, F. (2016). The argument from opinion as other-oriented reference in disciplinary discussions. Studies in Communication Sciences, 16(2), 114–123.
Sheila Padiglia. University of Teacher Education BEJUNE, Ch. De la Ciblerie 45, 2503 Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. E-mail: sheila.padiglia@hep-bejune.ch
Current themes of research:
Plurilingualism. Technology. Heterogeneity. Social interactions.
Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:
Padiglia, S., & Arcidiacono, F. (2015). A narrative format design to improve language acquisition through social interaction. Иновација у настави / Teaching Innovations, 28(3), 83–98.
Padiglia, S. (2008). An integrative view of the observation of implementation in the different sites: from dream to reality. In B. Schwarz (Ed.), ESCALATE - The White Book on argumentation and enquiry-based science learning. HUJI: Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Miserez-Caperos, C., Padiglia, S., Arcidiacono, F. (2016). L'apprentissage des langues en classe comme moyen d'intégration: l'exemple du projet SOFT. Revue Suisse de pédagogie spécialisée, 4, 37–43.
Céline Miserez-Caperos. University of Teacher Education BEJUNE, Ch. De la Ciblerie 45, 2503 Biel/Bienne, Switzerland. E-mail: celine.miserez@hep-bejune.ch
Current themes of research:
Argumentation. Social interactions. Multilingualism.
Most relevant publications in the field of Psychology of Education:
Miserez-Caperos, C., Padiglia, S., & Arcidiacono, F. (2016). L'apprentissage des langues en classe comme moyen d'intégration: l'exemple du projet SOFT. Revue Suisse de pédagogie spécialisée, 4, 37–43.
Perret-Clermont, A. N., Arcidiacono, F., Breux, S., Greco, S., & Miserez-Caperos, C. (2015). Knowledge-oriented argumentation in children. In F. H. van Eemeren & B. Garssen (Eds.), Scrutinizing Argumentation in Practice (pp. 135–149). Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Sinclaire-Harding L., Miserez C., Arcidiacono F., & Perret-Clermont A.-N. (2013) Argumentation in the Piagetian clinical interview as collaborative thinking: A step further in dialogism. In M. B. Ligorio, M. César (Eds.), Interplays between dialogical learning and dialogical self (pp. 53–82). Charlotte: Information Age Publishing.
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Arcidiacono, F., Padiglia, S. & Miserez-Caperos, C. Transitions in the representation and implementation of a language-learning project within a multicultural context. Eur J Psychol Educ 34, 239–254 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-018-0367-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10212-018-0367-z