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Handbook of Research and Practice in Heritage Language Education pp 1–19Cite as

Identity and motivation among heritage language learners of Italian in New Zealand: A social constructivist perspective

Part of the book series: Springer International Handbooks of Education ((SIHE))

Abstract

Over the last two decades, New Zealand has become one of a small number of culturally and linguistically superdiverse nations in the world (Spoonley and Bedford, Welcome to our world: Immigration and the reshaping of New Zealand. Auckland: Dunmore Publishing, 2012), and yet the teaching of migrant heritage languages in New Zealand receives little governmental support, leaving the maintenance of these languages largely in the hands of self-funded ethnic community groups, which seldom possess the resources to implement effective language teaching initiatives. Based on a study of the self-reported experiences of heritage language learners of Italian in New Zealand, this chapter provides a microperspective on the learning journeys of five New Zealanders of migrant background who set out to learn their heritage language through courses of Italian as a foreign language. Designed as a longitudinal exploration of language learning motivation through a series of in-depth narrative interviews and detailed classroom observations, the study’s main inquiry focuses on the significance of the learners’ own constructions of their Italian identity (or Italianità) for the development of their motivational trajectories throughout 18 months of learning. By explaining the learners’ motivation as the result of their own processing and reactions to key factors, relationships, and events both inside and outside the language classroom, the study illustrates the deeply personal and identity-dependent nature of the motivational processes observed, supporting a conceptualization of HL learning motivation that is in line with modern SLA theorizations of second language learning motivation as a dynamic, identity-related and socially constructed process.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Humanities, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

    Arianna Berardi-Wiltshire

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  1. Arianna Berardi-Wiltshire
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Correspondence to Arianna Berardi-Wiltshire .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. OISE/University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Peter Pericles Trifonas

  2. CERES/University of Toronto Munk School of Global Affairs, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

    Themistoklis Aravossitas

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Berardi-Wiltshire, A. (2016). Identity and motivation among heritage language learners of Italian in New Zealand: A social constructivist perspective. In: Trifonas, P., Aravossitas, T. (eds) Handbook of Research and Practice in Heritage Language Education. Springer International Handbooks of Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38893-9_6-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38893-9_6-1

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-38893-9

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  1. Latest

    Identity and Motivation Among Heritage Language Learners of Italian in New Zealand: A Social Constructivist Perspective
    Published:
    06 March 2017

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38893-9_6-2

  2. Original

    Identity and motivation among heritage language learners of Italian in New Zealand: A social constructivist perspective
    Published:
    13 December 2016

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-38893-9_6-1

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