Multilingual-multicultural schools

Having scrutinised the most relevant typologies of bilingual education the spotlight will now fall on modern trends and good practice. Kenner and Hickey (2008) seem to be convinced that learning different languages and learning through these languages leads to advantages in cognitive skills and support the shaping of multilingual identity. Moreover, it fosters the understanding of other cultures. As Kitzinger remarks (2013) their aim can be accepted when they state that showing good examples with the help of creative and innovative practice it is possible to motivate schools, communities and the whole society to develop multilingual skills and the teachers’ pedagogical repertoire.

One of the basic questions in multicultural education is identity. A great number of researchers have recognised it and some of them do noteworthy investigations into the topic.

Related studies introduce multilingual places like the Dutch Utrecht (Nortier, 2008 a), the English Sheffield (Ferguson, 2008), the Spanish Barcelona (Carrasco, 2008) or a Tamil diaspora in the UK (Pillai  Anderson, 2008). These reviews make us familiar with the migration history of the given community and the associated economic and social changes that triggered relevant shifts in education from traditional monolingual schooling to multilingual-multicultural education. Instead of stereotypes the authors give data based analyses of the actual situation not hiding real problems and the chances of solutions either.

For instance, the town of Utrecht (Nortier, 2008 a) has introduced intercultural policy which involves a bidirectional process: it has impact both on the local population and on the immigrants as well. In the frame of this policy the annual Tolerance Awards is presented and a ‘Cultural Sunday’ has been introduced where locals and immigrants may meet on different

50 cultural occasions, like exhibitions or presentations. It is important to add that official educational policy is extended only to Dutch–English bilingualism, but there are initiatives to launch other bilingual programmes, e.g. besides the official language of the Netherlands, Moroccan children can learn school subjects in their mother tongue as well. It obviously opens up new spaces to multilingualism in the school.

Creating and maintaining identity can be done effectively through artistic activities, like bilingual theatre plays as it is a practice in a Bosnian community in London (Mehmedbegovic, 2008), and the youngest generation can be motivated with the help of modern technology. However original and promising these initiatives may be, they are not exempt from failures either. Ali (2008) in his study gives an account of an action where a photographer from London organised a photo exhibition for Greek and Turkish Cypriot children in Cyprus. Due to political pressure the exhibition had to be closed earlier than planned. It suggests for us that politics is able to intervene and create enemy-labelling even in places where people with different languages, cultures and religions could live their lives without conflicts.

The results and effects of multilingual-multicultural education are based on the community where this type of education is going on. Therefore, it is a crucial point to investigate how home, school and community relate to each other in special multicultural settings. Studies focus on the importance of intergenerational learning in Bengali communities in East London (Kenner et al., 2008), on cooperation among schools in the Netherlands and France (Nortier, 2008b; Hélot, 2008), and preschools in Sweden (Axelsson, 2008). It can noticed that besides mainstream schools, complementary education also plays its part in linguistic-cultural activities e.g. in Chinese and Portuguese community schools in London (Barradas  Chen, 2008) and it is worth emphasising the necessity of parent-teacher partnership as a key element (Young  Hélot, 2008).

In Europe, the European Union offers valuable contribution to school projects. Hélot’s (2008) review gives details about a Comenius-project called Only Connect which was launched in Greece, France, Spain and the UK at the same time in order to get to know each other’s cultural heritage through children’s literature works. To break down language barriers, teacher trainees, who translate the given works, are at disposal. By this, several target groups can have an insight into a lesser known segment of European culture. Up to now thirty books have been translated and read in the participating schools (Figure 13).

51 Figure 13. The products of the Only Connect project (Hélot, 2008; p. 79)

Axelsson (2008) examines a Swedish pre-school where in big cities like Stockholm, Göteborg or Malmö it may easily happen that in the outskirts even whole kindergartens are multicultural. The study reveals that according to a law from 1977 in Sweden if at least five children of the same nationality go to the same kindergarten, the kindergarten is obliged to provide them with mother tongue education. It is interesting, however, that the law does not refer to Sweden’s own minorities, namely Sami, Finnish or Meänkieli as they, disregarding their number, are automatically entitled to receive mother tongue education. Axelsson in her research aims to show how kindergarteners adjust to the language use in the kindergarten and at home. The relevance of her study is shown in the fact that during her investigation some hidden circumstances that had retarded mother tongue acquisition came into limelight. On the basis of this research teachers and education professionals were able to improve the situation, e.g. with a greater involvement of parents and wider availability of L1 books.

Actors of multilingual-multicultural education can do a lot not only on micro level in their own environment, but also on a higher level, i.e. on the level of policy making.

Therefore multicultural education requires special strategies along which effective and beneficial practice can be evolved. On official level schools are the core and basic triggering factors of pedagogical development, therefore it is important to see how they work and what they do in the area of multiculturalism. In this topic, studies deal with the needs of primary school children in Luxembourg (Portante  Max, 2008), secondary school children who learn both Arabic and Hebrew (Mor-Sommerfeld, 2008), and pre-school children’s requirements in South London (Gómez, 2008) and Ireland (Hickey, 2008). Additionally, systems and policies are examined from several aspects (Ashton, 2008; Kirsch, 2008; Yagmur, 2008).

52 In Hickey and Portante’s opinion “even young children become aware of the lower status accorded to their minority language” (2008; p. 121). Therefore, Hickey (2008) finds it useful that in Ireland already very young children should get acquainted with their national language; in the shadow of a world language. The presence of the Irish language, which became one of the official languages in the EU in 2007, means a special challenge as its usage is not unified, i.e. there are people who use it as L1 and others as L2. Paradoxically, children whose L1 is Irish are in a disadvantageous situation as their language level is not properly developed in the kindergarten where Irish is mostly taught as a foreign language. The conclusion is that different pedagogical approaches are needed for the different groups of speakers in order to gain useable language command already in early childhood.

In Europe, multilingual education is supported by the European Union, whose language educational policy is manifested in different language learning projects just as well as its basic principle, “mother tongue plus two”, which means the acquisition of two foreign languages beside one’s mother tongue. Among the different projects VALEUR expresses the precept which can be considered a useful educational and cultural ideology, i.e. it should be seen that each language has its own values, whether it is spoken by the majority or minority of a state, therefore each of them should be supported (McPake, 2008). According to this, it is promising that the United Kingdom, in its new language strategy, overtly supports early childhood language acquisition, not only in the area of mother tongues, but also in the case of foreign languages (King, 2008).

In Hungary it may be observed that there are more and more chances for the youngest language learners to develop their language competence. Within the frame of the so-called World–Language Programme a special DVD was issued which aims to present the available best practices in early childhood English and German language education. The contents range from holistic language acquisition through environmental education in a foreign language to theme-centred language acquisition in the kindergarten (“Jó gyakorlat”, 2009).