Page 294 - Karmen Pižorn, Alja Lipavic Oštir in Janja Žmavc, ur. • Obrazi več-/raznojezičnosti. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut, 2022. Digitalna knjižnica, Dissertationes 44
P. 294
tural elements that are not part of the out-of-school experience of Irish
pupils. So if we take the learner-centredness of the Primary School Curric-
ulum seriously we must find ways of including EAL pupils’ home languag-
es and cultures in their educational experience.
Scoil Bhríde’s decision to encourage the use of home languages in the
classroom is diametrically opposed to the widespread practice of banning
the use of home languages at school, usually defended on the apparent-
ly commonsense ground that the more time pupils from immigrant fam-
ilies spend immersed in the language of schooling, the more rapidly they
will achieve proficiency. As so often, however, common sense turns out to
be nonsense. To insist that a 4½-year-old child leave her home language at
the school gate is cruel, foolish and doomed to failure. Cruel because her
home language is central to her identity and her sense of self, so to forbid
her to use it is tantamount to suppressing her individuality. Foolish be-
cause her home language is her principal cognitive tool, which means that
we must find ways of enabling her to use it to learn curriculum content that
is delivered in a language with which, to begin with, she is unfamiliar. And
doomed to failure because although it may be possible to forbid immigrant
pupils to speak their home language at school, the language inevitably per-
sists in the never-ending stream of their consciousness, the inward sound
of their identity. Scoil Bhríde’s decision to include EAL pupils’ home lan-
guages in classroom communication was reinforced by an important his-
torical consideration: in the 19th century the use of Irish was forbidden in
schools, and this contributed significantly to language loss. Déirdre Kir-
wan and her colleagues were determined that the same should not happen
to their EAL pupils. Their solution had significant consequences for class-
room discourse, to which we now turn.
3.2 Teaching and learning through dialogue
In the “recitation” tradition (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), classroom discourse
comprises long stretches of monologue from the teacher, interspersed with
brief exchanges that follow a fixed three-part structure. The teacher initi-
ates the exchanges by asking a question to check her learners’ comprehen-
sion; one or more learners volunteer an answer, often no more than a sin-
gle word; and the teacher provides evaluative feedback before moving on to
the next question. By contrast, learner-centred pedagogies seek to engage
learners in exploratory talk that brings “school knowledge” into interaction
with their “action knowledge”. By definition, exploratory talk entails that
294
pupils. So if we take the learner-centredness of the Primary School Curric-
ulum seriously we must find ways of including EAL pupils’ home languag-
es and cultures in their educational experience.
Scoil Bhríde’s decision to encourage the use of home languages in the
classroom is diametrically opposed to the widespread practice of banning
the use of home languages at school, usually defended on the apparent-
ly commonsense ground that the more time pupils from immigrant fam-
ilies spend immersed in the language of schooling, the more rapidly they
will achieve proficiency. As so often, however, common sense turns out to
be nonsense. To insist that a 4½-year-old child leave her home language at
the school gate is cruel, foolish and doomed to failure. Cruel because her
home language is central to her identity and her sense of self, so to forbid
her to use it is tantamount to suppressing her individuality. Foolish be-
cause her home language is her principal cognitive tool, which means that
we must find ways of enabling her to use it to learn curriculum content that
is delivered in a language with which, to begin with, she is unfamiliar. And
doomed to failure because although it may be possible to forbid immigrant
pupils to speak their home language at school, the language inevitably per-
sists in the never-ending stream of their consciousness, the inward sound
of their identity. Scoil Bhríde’s decision to include EAL pupils’ home lan-
guages in classroom communication was reinforced by an important his-
torical consideration: in the 19th century the use of Irish was forbidden in
schools, and this contributed significantly to language loss. Déirdre Kir-
wan and her colleagues were determined that the same should not happen
to their EAL pupils. Their solution had significant consequences for class-
room discourse, to which we now turn.
3.2 Teaching and learning through dialogue
In the “recitation” tradition (Tharp & Gallimore, 1988), classroom discourse
comprises long stretches of monologue from the teacher, interspersed with
brief exchanges that follow a fixed three-part structure. The teacher initi-
ates the exchanges by asking a question to check her learners’ comprehen-
sion; one or more learners volunteer an answer, often no more than a sin-
gle word; and the teacher provides evaluative feedback before moving on to
the next question. By contrast, learner-centred pedagogies seek to engage
learners in exploratory talk that brings “school knowledge” into interaction
with their “action knowledge”. By definition, exploratory talk entails that
294
