ABSTRACT

In France, dominant monolingual discourses and teachers’ lack of knowledge about bilingualism and second language acquisition often result in ‘French only’ policies in classrooms including in pre-school classrooms where some emergent bilingual children speak a language other than the language of schooling and very little or no French. These policies can be detrimental to emergent bilingual children's language development, identity construction and overall long-term academic success. However, teachers in multilingual classrooms also have the power to exercise their agency to support children's bilingual language development and to implement practices which empower them and their families. This paper focuses on the ways in which one pre-school teacher working with three and four year old emergent bilingual children asserted her agency in the classroom despite institutional constraints. It investigates the beliefs, experiences, aspirations and knowledge which underpinned her sense of agency, the ways in which her actions empowered the children and parents and discusses the implications of the study for initial teacher education and continuous professional development.

摘要

在法国，占主导地位的一语种话语以及教师对双语和第二语言习得的了解不足，常常导致在教室（包括学前教室）中出现“仅限法语”政策，其中一些新兴的双语儿童说的语言不是学校所用的语言，而且很少或没有法语。这些政策可能对新兴的双语儿童的语言发展，身份认同和总体长期学业成就有害。但是，多语言教室中的老师也有权行使其代理人的职责，以支持儿童的双语语言发展，并采取使他们及其家庭有能力的做法。本文关注的是尽管存在机构限制，一位与三岁和四岁的新兴双语孩子一起工作的学前老师在课堂上主张自己的代理人的方式。它调查了支持她的代理意识的信念，经验，愿望和知识，她的行为赋予孩子和父母权力的方式，并讨论了该研究对初等教师教育和持续专业发展的意义。