Collaboration and Co-Construction of Knowledge During Language Awareness Activities in Canadian Elementary School

Abstract

Drawing on Language Awareness (LA) approaches developed for francophone classrooms and a sociocultural theoretical perspective on language and learning that posits the genesis of new knowledge construction is situated in social interactions and shaped by socio-historical context, we conducted a small-scale case study of the implementation of LA activities in elementary school. Fieldwork practices included observing and videotaping classroom interactions among French Immersion students in Vancouver and students from the mainstream francophone programme and classes d'accueil in Montreal, individual and focus group interviews with students, and collecting relevant documents for context description. In this paper, our analysis of data demonstrates how LA activities enabled teachers to engage students in focused discussions about language diversity and fostered the emergence of a community of learners who had access to a repertoire of languages that expanded beyond official languages. We examine how collaborative LA activities encouraged students to draw on collective language resources to approach languages unknown by the majority. We argue that valuing and sharing knowledge of diverse languages in classroom discussions fostered the discursive co-construction of new knowledge about the evolution of languages, relationships between languages, as well as a critical stance on the relative status of languages.

Keywords:

• language awareness
• sociocultural theory
• collaboration

Notes

1. This programme of research was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Reseach Council through Metropolis Project grants and Canadian Heritage through the Questions on Multiculturalism in Canada Program (Armand & Dagenais, 2004). We would like to thank teachers and students who welcomed us in their classrooms to conduct this research.

2. The project, integrating newly arrived immigrant students, was funded by the Direction des services aux Communautés culturelles du Ministère de l'Éducation du Québec.

3. Linda Hof and Randy Rotheisler videotaped classroom interactions in Vancouver and Julie Heusse and Didier Berry videotaped activities in Montréal.

4. This longitudinal study, Éveil aux langues et à la diversité linguistique chez des élèves du primaire dans deux métropoles canadiennes, is supported by a standard grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada awarded to Dagenais, Armand, Lamarre, Moore and Sabatier, 2005–2008.