Event overview
Ethnography of an early years teacher – superdiversity in a London nursery class
Dr Rose Drury and Dr Leena Robinson
The aim of the research is to document ways and times when a nursery teacher and her bilingual practitioners and families collaborate to support children’s learning. Feeling secure and having a strong sense of belonging to a setting supports all children in their learning. When families and schools work well together, parental engagements can be a powerful lever in raising school achievement. However, few studies focus on nurseries in multilingual communities.‘Superdiversity’ and a recognition of the complexities of families’ transnational identities (Vertovec, 2009) inform this study. From a sociocultural perspective, practitioners’ early encounters with children and families are built on a ‘thick’ and multi-stranded’ (Gonzalez et al, 2005) view of learning.
This is an ethnographic study involving practitioners’ field notes, focus group meetings with parents and practitioners, school documentation and assessment profiles over the course of a school year. Our emerging analysis reveals an interplay of variables including countries of origin, complex subsets of family languages, religions and new technologies. The local superdiverse area provides support for the families in their quest to keep the home languages alive. The nursery staff are comfortable with this aim and keen to develop new ways of engaging with home languages.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 27 Jan 2016 | 5:15pm - 6:30pm |
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