Exploring Bilingual Children's Perceptions of Being Bilingual and Biliterate: implications for educational provision

Abstract

Within the framework of constructing learning, this paper explores the feelings of bilingual children towards developing two languages, two literacies and belonging to two communities in the environment of the education system, which in England is insensitive towards bilingual learners in its implementation of a monolingual and monoliterate curriculum. This paper presents the approaches and procedures employed to investigate young bilingual children's constructs of their own identity and about being bilingual and becoming biliterate. Importantly, these constructs are expbred through both the children's languages which has not been done in previous studies. Our findings show that bilingual children express their constructs of bilingualism, literacy and identity differently in both languages. Throughout the paper, we indicate the educational implications of this study for the policy and practice of the monolingual and monoliterate curriculum in England for bilingual children's identities languages and literacies.