Introduction: Bilingual Life and Language Choice at Northside

Perhaps more than any other debate in education, the study of language grapples with questions of power and identity.

[From The Real Ebonics Debate: Power, Language, and the Education of African-American Children]¹

THE CASE OF NORTHSIDE

The four-year critical ethnographic study that instigated the writing of these topics began with an investigation of how immigrant high-school students born in Hong Kong used Cantonese as well as English to achieve academic and social success in a Toronto school where English was the language of instruction. Much had been written on teaching strategies for accommodating English as a second or other language (ESOL) high school students in such schools, and setting them up for academic success. However, much less had been written about how students themselves used different languages to achieve success.² The findings revealed that although the use of Cantonese contributed to academic and social success of in a number of ways, it also created different kinds of linguistic and academic dilemmas for teachers and students in the school. Influenced by contemporary Canadian discourses, beliefs, and policies around immigration and language use, these dilemmas and issues were complex and required skillful negotiation.³ I learned a lot from watching and listening to the ways students and teachers negotiated academic and linguistic dilemmas at Northside, and I wanted to share what I had learned with other educators working in multi-lingual communities.

The reason I was interested in undertaking a study of bilingual life at a high school like Northside in the first place had to do with my work as a teacher educator at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. The conversations I had with students enrolled in the Initial (Pre-Service) Teacher Education program had revealed that their understandings around language learning and the use of languages other than English at school were often limited. As mostly monolingual speakers of English, very few of my students had any personal experience with the difficulties and dilemmas associated with learning and using English at school. I wanted to provide them with an opportunity to hear high-school students and teachers speak to these difficulties and dilemmas. As discussed in greater detail below, having recently enrolled a large number of Cantonese-speaking students from Hong Kong who were using English as a second language, Northside was an excellent school in which to undertake such a study.

As a critical, ethnographic, teacher education text, the goal is to reveal and question coercive and discriminatory schooling polices and practices. The lens through which I examine different ways of negotiating linguistic and academic dilemmas reflects this goal. In linking the data from the study with the critical literature in the fields of sociolinguistics and education, I learned that it is not always clear what kinds of practices are coercive and what kinds of practices are not. This uncertainty is reflected in the commentaries and it is my hope that readers will engage with the questions posed there and form their own understandings on how to create effective and equitable learning environments in English-speaking schools that serve multilingual students.

Over the 4 years of the study, I worked as the principal investigator and leader of a multilingual, multicultural, multiracial research team that was composed of a co-investigator, 10 graduate and undergraduate students from two universities in Toronto, as well as some of the high school students studying at Northside. One Chinese Cantonese-speaking parent born in Hong Kong also joined the team as a translator and transcriber for a short period of time. The co-investigator, research assistants, and I did not all work together at one time. There were a total of five research teams: one that was put together for the pilot study in the summer of 1994 and four different research teams that were put together over the 4 years of the project. The research teams and I spent the first 3 years conducting fieldwork at Northside and reading together in study groups.

The fourth year was spent transcribing and translating data, discussing different ways of understanding talk by Cantonese-speaking students, and examining both the bilingual and monolingual transcripts for important ideas and discourses. Further discussion of our fieldwork and the reading we did to enhance our fieldwork is taken up in Appendix B.

The decisions around which data to share with readers rested solely with me. However, the transcribed ethnographic texts, the commentary, and the pedagogical discussion have been "member checked" by those research participants who provided the data.⁴

The task of member checking the data included verifying that the transcribed ethnographic texts in each chapter actually represented what the participants had wanted to say during their interviews. Any mis-representation of ideas was corrected and then approved by the research participants before being published here. Similarly, the analyses in the Commentary and Pedagogical Discussion sections were read by those research participants whose words have been analyzed.

In the third summer of the project (July 1998), 15 students from Anne Yee's English class at Northside were hired as student researchers to participate in a 12-session playwriting workshop. The goal of the workshop was to provide the students, most of whom did not use English as a first language, with an opportunity to develop their English language skills and write their own ethnographies through the genre of playwriting. As is discussed further in Appendix B, the idea to in volve student researchers in ethnographic research through playwriting evolved from the need to negotiate the politics of researching "other people's children."⁵ The student playwriting workshop also allowed the research team to work toward what ethnographer Patti Lather calls "catalytic validity," evidence that the research process had led to insight, and ideally, activism on the part of the research participants.⁶

Having begun this Introduction with a brief discussion of the research we undertook at Northside, I continue with a description of the academic programming and linguistically diverse student body at Northside. It is my hope that such a description will provide readers with a set of contextual understandings they can use in thinking about the dilemmas and issues. The first ethnographic de scription is followed by a more specific discussion of bilingual Cantonese-English life at the school. In this second discussion, I look at some of the ways Cantonese-speaking students born in Hong Kong chose to use Cantonese and English in school and the decisions that lie behind their choices. My discussion here does not include a comprehensive analysis of language practices in the Cantonese-speaking community at Northside.⁷ Rather, it includes a selected review of those practices that are particularly relevant to the discussion of academic, linguistic, and pedagogical dilemmas.

¹See Perry and Delpit (1998).

² Educational theorists, educators and applied linguists who have written about ways of creating effective and equitable learning environments that respond to the needs of a linguistically diverse high-school student population include Coelho (1998); Corson (2001); Cummins (1996); Genesee (1994); Gonzalez and Darling-Hammond (1997); Hernandez (1995); Jaramillo and Olsen (1999); McGroarty and Faltis (1991); Nieto (2000); and Pennycook (2001).

³ As explained by educational theorist Daniel Yon (2000), in popular usage, discourse refers simply to conversation and writing. In the field of discourse analysis and discourse theory, however, the term discourse is defined as a collection of statements and ideas that structure the way we understand the world around us. Discourse shapes how we come to think and produce new knowledge. To illustrate, different discourses around immigration shape whether or not people think Canada's immigration policies are too lenient or too harsh. Discourse can also facilitate shared understandings and engagements with others. For example, people who share similar ideas on the harshness of current immigration policies can work collectively to lobby for change to these policies. However, although discourse may facilitate thought and action, it may also work to constrain, because it sets up barriers and blind spots to thinking and acting. Anti-immigrant discourses, may constrain collective lobbying for more lenient immigration policies.

⁴ Readers should note that my goal was to have all data and analyses undergo a process of member checking by those participants whose words had been used. How-ever, it was not possible to locate all of the students who originally participated in the study. As a result, almost all, rather than all, data and analyses have been member checked.

⁵The phrase "other people's children," was coined by Lisa Delpit (1995).

⁶See Lather (1986).

⁷See Heller (1994, 1999); Lin (2001); Rampton (1995).

اخر الاخبار

اخبار العتبة العباسية المقدسة

المجمع العلمي للقرآن الكريم يصدر الكتاب الثاني من سلسلة يخشى

قسم الشعائر يكرّم أصحاب المواكب المشاركة في إحياء ذكرى شهادة السيدة الزهراء (عليها السلام)

جامعة العميد تستقبل طلبة المراحل الأولى المقبولين ضمن كلياتها للعام الدراسي الجديد

سماحة السيد الصافي يكرّم طلبة حفظ القرآن الكريم المتفوّقين ويؤكّد دور التدبّر في الهداية والتكامل

المزيد

الآخبار الصحية

طبيب يكشف تأثير برودة الشتاء على النوم

دون أن تعلم.. 10 عادات يومية تسرع شيخوخة جسمك

تقرير: النيكوتين خطر على القلب مهما كانت الطريقة

أيهما أفضل لصحتك.. زبدة الفول السوداني أم النوتيلا؟

المزيد

الآخبار التكنلوجية

السعودية تدشن أكبر نظام لتخزين الكهرباء بالبطاريات في العالم !

بأمر تنفيذي.. ترامب يؤكد هدف عودة الأميركيين إلى القمر في عام 2028

بعيدا عن البشر.. "قتال جوي في الفضاء" بين أميركا والصين

كشف مذهل في قاع "برمودا" !

المزيد

مواضيع ذات صلة

Parents with Learning Disabilities CONCLUSION

PROVISION OF SUPPORT

CARING FOR CHILDREN

EUGENICS AND ETHICAL ISSUES

PARENTING

DISCRIMINATION AND DIVERSITY

THE HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Parents with Learning Disabilities

Legislation and Learning Disabilities CONCLUSION

LEGAL SAFEGUARDS

MENTAL CAPACITY ACT 2005

THE HUMAN RIGHTS ACT 1998