Practitioners' experiences in support language development of peri-urban preschool children

Abstract

Language matters have always been contentious, including the language of teaching and learning in schools. Despite policies enacted by the SA democratic government to promote and support early learning in the mother tongue, schools are allowed through the school governing bodies (SGBs) to offer education in a language other than the home language of the majority of the children enrolled in such schools. Research has proven the correlation between language and achievement and this study explored how early childhood care and education (ECCE) practitioners support the development of home language in the birth-to-four age group. A blend of Vygotsky’s social constructivist theory, the funds of knowledge (FoK) theory, Bakhtin’s dialogism theory and Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory of language and symbolic power was used and resulted in a fused theory which I termed socio-cultural dialogic language development (SCDLD) theory. A qualitative approach and a case study research design were employed. It focused on six ECCE practitioners from three different preschools in Mamelodi. Interviews, observations, field notes, casual conversations and document and visual data analysis were used as the primary tools for data collection. An ethics application was made to UNISA and clearance was granted. A permission letter from the University was given to the contact persons on site, and a brief statement that conveyed the reasons for the study, its duration, information about the researcher, organisational affiliation, uses of the data and an assurance that the rights of human subjects would be protected. The findings show the discord between practitioners’ conceptions and their classroom practices of home language development. The children use multiple home languages, which differ from the practitioners’ home languages. Practitioners speak and understand these home languages but opt to use English for teaching to accommodate children coming from minority languages. Unfortunately, practitioners are not conversant in English, thus wrongly used concepts are conveyed to the children. Making up for this, teachers resort to translanguaging, i.e., teaching in both English and majority languages to ensure that the meaning of the content is conveyed to the children. The implications of this practice is that children do not develop language proficiency, be it in their home language or English. Robust professional development that focuses on upskilling practitioners in specialising in home languages will ensure that children from birth to four years old participate successfully in subsequent grades.