Linguistic Negotiations and Early Grade Literacy in Multilingual Classrooms: Implications of Language Policy on Teachers’ Reading Pedagogical Practices in Nigeria

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday V)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Language issues related to: student access, early literacy and virtual communication encounters

Proposal

Reading is arguably the most important literacy skill a child needs to acquire earlier in life because it is the precondition to further academic success (Anderson-Levitt, 2004). Moreover, it is highly related to most, if not all other kinds of academic achievements, and could therefore serve as an index for measuring general academic achievement (Chall et al. 1990). As such, one of the main goals of primary school is to equip students with reading skills (Reis et al. 2011; Snow et al. 1998). Given how the use of languages in the public domain of multilingual contexts is often regulated language policy (Gandara & Gomez, 2009), primary schools are often sites for constant language regulation. This has implications for effective and sustainable early grade literacy learning, mainly because early grade literacy teachers in multilingual classrooms are constantly caught up in the web of linguistic negotiations, trying to determine which language to teach in, especially during reading instruction.
This paper draws on qualitative data from my dissertation research on early grade literacy in Lagos, Nigeria, which examines/examined? how early grade teachers, in linguistically diverse settings, engage with language policy to teach linguistically diverse students how to read in two distinct languages – English and Yoruba. I employ a comparative case study approach (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2017), which allows for a holistic comparison of phenomena across and within settings through three axis of comparisons: horizontal, vertical and transversal axis. Data included 30 interviews with early grade teachers and observations (20-45 minutes each) in 25 classrooms at how many schools. In the interviews, I asked teachers about their training and teaching experiences, language use, pedagogical practices and challenges. I employed a timed, structured observation tool adopted from the USAID-funded, RTI-administered Reading and Access Research Activity (RARA) project in Nigeria (2015). The tool documents different pedagogical strategies to teach the different reading skills, including phonemic awareness, sound-symbol correspondence, vocabulary, fluency, and literal and inferential comprehension (p. 178). I timed observations regarding which of the two languages is used when and for how long in the classroom in whole group, small group, and individual work, as well as in all student-teacher interactions.
I coded all observation data for amount of time dedicated to each type of instruction in each language, language functions, types of teaching and learning materials engaged, and factors influencing reading instruction. I also coded the interviews for discussions or expressions of language negotiation, beliefs about reading pedagogy, previous teacher preparation experiences, and innovative language-specific pedagogical moves. Preliminary findings show that many early grade teachers in multilingual classrooms lack the professional capability to teach early grade reading in either language. Teachers use English language most of the time and only resolve to the use of Yoruba when they need to scold students or give disciplinary instructions. Findings also reveal that majority of the teachers assigned to teach in primary 1-2 classes are non-teaching staff working as school clerks; they do not have teaching certification. Although many of these non-certified teachers have been teaching for more than three years, they majority of them have not received professional training on how to teach reading. These findings hold potential for improving teacher professional development efforts and contribute to the meritorious goal of improving and sustaining literacy in Nigeria, with implications for both human development and economic growth.

Author

• Olayinka Olagbegi-Adegbite, University of Wisconsin-Madison