Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 763

Part of Session 176: Re-thinking language policy and practice in urban education (Other abstracts in this session)

“Practiced language policies” with newly arrived immigrant children in France The invisibilisation of their plurilingual competence.

Authors: Hélot, Christine; Pickel, Timea
Submitted by: Hélot, Christine (University of Strasbourg, France)

This paper will focus on the case of newcomer students in France educated in a public lower secondary school in the multilingual city of Mulhouse. It will first propose an analysis of the official language in education policy for such students (BO, 2002; Spolsky, 2004), and explain how special induction classes are meant to focus specifically on the acquisition of the French language, at the expense of the students’ plurilingual competence (Coste, 2001).

We will then explain more specifically the effects of such a policy on the career guidance procedure which tends to disempower immigrant students and to discriminate against them mainly the grounds of their competence in French (Dhume et al , 2011). We are particularly interested in elucidating how the various actors responsible for the future educational prospects of such students practice a language policy based on the well-known republican principles of equality, with little understanding of bilingual acquisition and the role of the first language(s) in further language acquisition (Cummins, 2001, Garcia, 2009).

Finally, we will also show how the official policy can be negotiated (Menken & Garcia, 2010) by the teacher in the induction class, if students are encouraged to use their first languages to develop bi-plurilingual literacy skills. And the ‘hidden’ practiced policy of the guidance counsellors and mainstream teachers can also be resisted by the immigrant students themselves once they have understood the extent of their agency within the education system.

Our data was collected in 2010/2011 and consists in retrospective interviews with two 16 year old students who recollected their experience of guidance counselling in the school, an interview with the school’s vice principal explaining the procedure, and examples of “identity” texts (Cummins and Early, 2011) produced by students in the induction class. Thus our data is composed of different types of discourses, institutional, local as well as personal, produced by different actors in the school, in order to better understand how practiced language policies (Bonacina, 2010) for immigrant students interact with offical policies and impact on their agency and motivation.

References:

Bonacina, F. 2010. "A Conversation Analytic approach to practiced language policies: The example of an induction classroom for newly-arrived immigrant children in France". Unpublished doctoral dissertation. The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK.

Bulletin Officiel du Ministère de l’Education nationale et du Ministère de la Recherche. 2002 Numéro spécial : Scolarisation des nouveaux arrivants et des enfants du voyage.N°10. (27 December 2011)

Coste, D. 2001. Postface. De plus d’une langue à d’autres encore. Penser les compétences plurilingues ? In D'une langue à d'autres : pratiques et représentations. V. Castellotti (Dir.), 191-203. Rouen : Publications de l’Université de Rouen.

Cummins, J. 2001. Language, Power, and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Cummins, J. & Early, M. (2011) (eds.) Identity Texts. The collaborative creation of power in multilingual schools. Stoke on Trent: Trentham Books.

Dhume, F., Dukic, S., Chauvel, S. & Perrot, P. 2011. Orientation scolaire et discrimination. De l’(in)égalité de traitement selon l’origine. Paris: La Documentation Française.

Garcia, O. 2009. Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.

Sociolinguistics Symposium 19

Programme: accepted abstracts

“Practiced language policies” with newly arrived immigrant children in France The invisibilisation of their plurilingual competence.