Somewhere Along the Line

‘Somewhere Along the Line’

An exploration of bilingual community learners’ attitudes around literacy skills and learning using technology

Esther Barrett

Abstract

Bilingualism and literacy skills are high on the agenda in Welsh education and social policy. Technology is playing an increasingly important part in lifelong learning in terms of pedagogy, administration and learner support which has been recognised by Welsh Government in its policies and education inspection framework. Much research has been done around the issues of bilingualism and literacy (Hornberger, 2003) and the experiences of groups of learners engaging with technology, mainly in Higher Education. Some recent studies have looked at the use of the Welsh language in Social Media (e.g. Cunliffe & Honeycutt, 2010). This project brings these themes together to explore the opinions and experiences of a group of learners whose thoughts have not so far been investigated in this field. By engaging with bilingual community learners, we are able to confront the reality of their experiences and thoughts about learning using technology.

This qualitative research study was conducted in Wales in several phases over a four year period. Data was collected in various ways including an online national survey. Detailed learner profile interviews were carried out face to face with two groups of bilingual learners, and one group went on to participate in a focus group and artefact interviews, and to answer email questions. The data has been analysed thematically and the findings and discussion are part of a PhD thesis.

The study found that the attitudes of bilingual community learners relating to literacy and learning using technology are diverse, wide ranging and often related to deep issues of identity, tradition, self-confidence and a strong sense of what is ‘proper.’ The data includes many quotes that illustrate these themes. When key themes are formed into continua such as confidence, conformism and standards, the attitudes of participants can be placed somewhere along the line between the two extremes. This continua model can be a useful visualisation tool when considering the data.

The diverse range of attitudes among bilingual community learners using technology reveals a complex picture which may help to inform policy in the fields of minority language promotion and support, understanding the needs of older bilingual learners, and the use of technology in community learning and literacy skills delivery. Conference participants might find this research a useful background resource when enthusing and supporting multilingual learners and for helping to mainstream learning using technology in a multilingual context.

‘Somewhere Along the Line’

An exploration of bilingual community learners’ attitudes around literacy skills and learning using technology

This paper discusses some of the findings of this PhD research project in relation to supporting multilingual learners using technology in learning. It is divided into several sections. Section 1 gives an introductory overview of the background to the research project and section 2 briefly describes the methodology. Section 3 discusses the Continua of Biliteracy and how the model supports the analysis of the research. Section 4 explores some of the findings of the research and how these relate to current debate around literacy, technology and bilingualism. Section 5 discusses the generalisation of this study and its implications on policy.

1. Outline – Introduction and Background

Issues around the use of technology in teaching and learning, administration and working in partnership are becoming more centralised and embedded into the organisational policies of education providers as each academic year passes as a result of developments in government policy over time (Andrews, 2012). Literacy, ICT skills and partnership working are at the core of government education policy in Wales and the UK (Welsh Government, 2010). Bilingualism is a principal driver of policy in Wales and continues to be supported and promoted by Welsh Government, generating much debate and activity (Welsh Government, 2012). There is a great deal of academic and practical research in the areas of eLearning, literacy and bilingualism, but none that bring these themes together in a community learning context. The project described here brings these themes together to explore the opinions and experiences of a group of learners whose thoughts have not so far been investigated in this field. By engaging with bilingual community learners, we are able to confront the reality of their experiences and thoughts about learning using technology.

2. The Line Taken - Method

The model on which this research was based is Nancy Hornberger’s Continua of Biliteracy (2003) which brings together the fields of literacy and bilingualism or multilingualism. Jim Cummings (2003) states in the forward to Continua of Biliteracy that he ‘remembers his excitement’ when he read the original article describing the model. He felt that the issues surrounding literacy and bilingualism had not previously been addressed in the same contexts and that there had even been tension between the two areas in terms of political debate. He now saw a ‘framework’ which would bring together the two subject areas and this would provide an ‘intellectual space’ in which the relationships between literacy and bilingualism could be debated ‘rationally’. He says that now ‘any literacy event or practice could be located within the multidimensional space provided by the framework and analysed from a variety of disciplinary perspectives in relation to a matrix of intersecting continua.’

Hornberger (2003) argues that there are many issues around ‘the degree to which literacy knowledge and skills in one language aid or impede the learning of literacy knowledge and skills in another.’ As there was no model that combined bilingualism and literacy, or biliteracy, she stated that ‘a framework for understanding biliteracy is needed in which to situate research and teaching.’ The Continua of Biliteracy’ therefore ‘proposes a framework for understanding biliteracy, using the notion of continuum to provide the overarching conceptual scheme for describing biliterate contexts, development and media.’

The learners who participated in the study were identified with the help of several contacts in community learning throughout Wales. In order to obtain data around bilingualism, literacy and the use of learning using technology it was necessary to target groups of learners who were bilingual and who used technology in a bilingual community learning environment. The two groups were chosen as being representative of bilingual community learners in Wales and this was using the ‘convenience’ and ‘focus group’ sampling methods (Fink, 1995). The quantity of data to be collected needed to be manageable and two groups which could be compared were considered to be a sufficient sample. The main issue around this is that the researcher needs to be confident that the small groups involved are representative of the wider population. Therefore, using the ‘snowball sampling’ approach, a national survey went out which was targeted at all bilingual community learners across Wales. The survey link was emailed to various colleagues who then passed the link to other contacts who they believed would be eligible and willing to participate. The disadvantage to the snowball sampling method is that the researcher does not know how many people are eligible to participate and what the number of responses is likely to be. Also, the people who are contacted by contacts may have a bias which is unknown to the researcher.

Two groups of learners were asked to participate in a 30 minute interview in order to complete a learner profile at the beginning of the project. The profiles were intended to provide some general information about the learners in terms of gender, first and second languages, backgrounds, skills, and their attitudes towards language, literacy and technology. The participation of one of the groups ended at this point, and the profiles that they completed help make up a useful picture when added to the results from the other group and the national survey. The second group was asked to attend one focus group with the rest of their colleagues in order to produce a theme analysis of the issues that came up. The focus group was considered to be a useful way of allowing a more organic, interactive and spontaneous expression of ideas and attitudes which would be captured on video and transcribed afterwards.

After the focus group the learners were asked to participate in one in depth ‘artefact’ interview during the remainder of the two year period, in which they would talk about technology, bilingualism and literacy in relation to a particular piece of work that they had undertaken or a device that they found useful. An artefact interview was chosen because it enables the researcher to approach a subject in a slightly different way from a direct question type interview. It is a variation of a semi-structured interview which uses an artefact during interview to support guided recall. There are several strengths associated with this method of interviewing. Firstly it allows the learner to play a part in setting the agenda for the interview. Secondly it prompts discussion of behaviours, feelings and beliefs. Personal artefacts can be more revealing of the person than researcher led topics of discussion, and they can support recall more effectively than by questioning alone. It allows the learner more chance for reflection and this may lead to deeper responses. (JISC, 2007)

The remaining group of learners was also asked to answer two questions by email over the two year period in order to gain another perspective and to vary the questioning techniques. It was envisaged that attitudes may change over time, but this was not apparent. The advantage of asking participants to answer two questions by email was that they would answer the direct questions succinctly and in a focussed way.

An online survey was devised using Survey Monkey in order to reach a wider group of bilingual community learners with some basic questions which reflected the some of the questions asked in the learner profiles and the emails. Survey Monkey is a free online tool which is commonly used by education providers in Wales, and would therefore be familiar to some participants. A national survey in Wales was considered necessary to give the research a broader perspective and allow the findings from the in depth interviews and data collections to be placed into a national context.

This study and the discussion which emerges are based on the model of interpretivism, and draws on various aspects of positivism, emotionalism and constructivism (Silverman, 2001). The research is based on the case studies of two groups of people who represent bilingual community learners in Wales. The use of the term ‘case study’ has become extremely popular in sociological research in recent years (Gomm, 2000) and overlaps with many other research terms such as ethnography, participant observation, qualitative research and life history. Silverman (2001) argues that ‘context’ and ‘process’ are important factors when gathering data in order to understand behaviour. The researcher should also have an idea of the history of the phenomenon to be studied. A range of data collection techniques were adopted in order to gain several types of data from the general to the more in depth. The intention was to enable a multidirectional exploration of the issues and at the same time a more rounded view of the contexts, backgrounds and viewpoints of the participants.

3. The Continua of Biliteracy

Hornberger defines biliteracy as the ‘use of two or more languages in and around writing’ and she describes the Continua of Biliteracy as an ‘Ecological Framework’ – a ‘flexible model to guide educators, researchers, and policy makers in designing, carrying out, and evaluating educational programs for the development of multilingual learners, each program adapted to its own specific context, media and contents.’

When Hornberger first looked at the issues surrounding literacy and bilingualism through existing literature on the subjects she noticed that in both areas characterisation of the aspects of these subjects were spoken of in terms of opposites. She mentions the examples of Language 1 (L1) versus Language 2 (L2), monolingualism versus bilingualism and oral versus literate societies. But she realised that in each case the extremes were just two ends of a continuum, and that in reality all aspects of literacy and bilingualism lie along many continua that relate to each other and form a ‘highly complex whole.’ She concluded that biliteracy use and learning occur in the ‘dynamic, rapidly changing and sometimes contested spaces along and across the intersecting continua.’

Figure 1: Power relations in the continua model

Source: Adapted from Hornberger (2003: 39)

Hornberger emphasises issues of power relations in the continua model and argues that that in policy and practice relating to biliteracy there ‘tends to be an implicit privileging of one end of the continua over the other such that one end of the continuum is associated with more power than the other.’ She suggests that the nature of powerful biliteracy is ‘open to transformation’ through everyday practice in education. Power relations are not fixed but are ‘socially and culturally constructed’ and can be changed over time by use of ‘critical reflection’ by educators, researchers, community members and policy makers.

Using the Continua of Biliteracy as a framework, data was collected relating to the four sets of continua in an attempt to explore the attitudes of bilingual community learners around literacy skills and learning using technology in as comprehensive a way as possible. Figure 1 shows the continua divided into four main areas.

Context

On the micro-macro continuum language patterns can be studied at the local to the global level. At the micro end of the continuum linguists may use discourse analysis to study the use of phonemes. Further along the continuum, language patterns may be studied in their context. Further along, language features may be looked at in terms of the wider community or society. At the macro end, patterns of language can be studied on a national or even global scale. For example one participant says;