Guofang Li

A persistent decline in heritage language (HL) has been observed among immigrant children in North America, largely due to insufficient HL resources and support in mainstream societies. Existing studies on early HL maintenance at home often privilege family language policies and intentional practices, yet HL resources and materials within domestic contexts remain underexamined. Simultaneously, an emerging paradigmatic shift from human-centric to posthuman in early childhood education highlights the agential powers of more-than-human elements in generating unexpected (re)configurations of children. This necessitates re-envisioning children’s literacy be(com)ing and rethinking what counts as early literacy resources beyond intentionally pre-designed and human-centered rationalities that long dominate the field.Grounded in posthuman theories (e.g., Barad, 2007; Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), this study reconceptualized home-based resources and practices for early Chinese HL (CHL) development by unfolding the dynamic, ongoing interplay of children and the more-than-human agencies where new possibilities of knowing/becoming Chinese literacies emerge. Drawing on posthuman-informed ethnographic approaches, the study involved micro-mesh material-centered interviews and observations with children (aged 2-6 years old) from three Chinese immigrant families in BC, Canada, during both learning and playtimes. Data were derived from field notes, video recordings, photographs, and researcher journals from year-long home visits, capturing children’s embodied engagements with material/discursive/affective forces and the spatial configurations of their homes. Data analysis revealed dynamic CHL assemblages composed of child-material-space entanglements that continually evolved within the flow of daily life. CHL acquisition emerged not only through activities with intentionally and explicitly designed Chinese language resources but also diverse embodied, sensory, and affective experiences co-created by children and a wide spectrum of more-than-human elements. These embodied engagements, or material-discursive practices, enveloped young learners’ linguistic and non-linguistic communications, offering children opportunities to enhance their CHL development through processes such as word building, character recognition, and communication skills—all of which demonstrate children becoming literate through the human-nonhuman interconnectedness. Findings highlighted the emergent, unbounded, and rhizomatic nature of early HL development, challenging the pre-determined literacy growth trajectories. By attending to materials and child-material intra-actions, this investigation illuminated the often-overlooked, “hidden” resources and practices in home CHL education.

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Despite an accumulated body of research arguing for the legitimacy of English as an international language (EIL) or varieties of English used in international and multilingual contexts, American standardized English has remained popular and is prioritized in comparison to other English varieties within Korean society. Little research has investigated how educational policies associated with teacher recruitment and teacher education have responded to these research findings regarding EIL and how secondary Korean teachers of English have taken up the EIL influence in their teaching in Korea. Against the backdrop of a critical analysis of the current English educational policies concerning EIL in Korea at the macro level, this multiple case study focused on factors (teachers’ schooling, teacher personal experiences, coursework in teacher education, and work contexts) influencing five Korean secondary English teachers’ beliefs and teaching practices in incorporating EIL at the micro level, utilizing multiple data sources such as semi-structured interviews, class observations, surveys, and documents collection. Drawing upon the theoretical frameworks of language ideology and teacher cognition, analyses of data suggested that the teachers’ level of acceptance of EIL varied according to their exposure to different English varieties and contact with English users from diverse contexts; however, all teachers assigned a higher status to standardized English in English-speaking countries over other English varieties in their teaching in Korea. Their decision to incorporate EIL into their teaching was also influenced by social disparity among students and their unequal access to educational resources at home and in schools. Further, findings revealed the focal teachers’ awareness of EIL did not automatically translate into teaching practice due to practical challenges such as lack of guidelines for teaching EIL, insufficient instructional resources, and high-stakes college entrance examinations, as well as the need to comply with the national curriculum. The findings have the potential to inform policy changes and English teachers’ education and professional development in Korea and beyond.

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Despite continued calls for the “multi/plural turn” (Kubota, 2016a; May, 2014) for instructional practices and “linguistic human rights” for education through mother tongue (Skutnabb-Kangas, 1988), there is currently a global surge of English as a medium of instruction (EMI) in school education that situates English in a dominant position. This study is motivated by such a widespread of EMI in Nepal. Guided by the theory of “Critical Language Policy Studies” (Tollefson, 1991, 2006), this study explores the development and enactment of EMI policy at Nepal’s public schools and what they mean for diverse students along the lines of language, ethnicity, gender, and social class. I used “critical ethnography” (Anderson, 1989) and “critical policy analysis” (Diem et al., 2014) as research methods to provide a holistic and thick understanding of the EMI policy in Nepal. The data were gathered through participant observations of EMI lessons, interviews with policymakers, school administrators, teachers, parents, focus group interviews with students, field notes, and written artifacts. The findings demonstrated how EMI has evolved as a de facto medium-of-instruction policy through the state’s hidden agendas of envisioning education as a service industry, eventually creating privatization in public education that favors EMI. Aligning with the macro-level discourses, meso-level policy agents (e.g., parents and students) have been socialized into “neoliberal imaginations” (Abbinnett, 2021) of EMI to enter the new middle-class identity, which has become a founding ideology to support the growth of EMI in Nepali public schools. At the micro-level, through the mechanism of EMI, the school has served as a reproducer of social class and language hierarchy. The results further showed how EMI practices without planning and prerequisites (e.g., qualified teachers) resulted in the poverty of content learning and, therefore, epistemic inequalities. The classroom discourse analysis further revealed how teachers carried an agentic role to scaffold the limited English proficiency of their students by using Nepali (a dominant national language) as a supplementary language, yet perpetuated unequal languaging in the absence of students’ mother tongue. Together, these findings indicate a caution against a rush to policy overhaul to EMI in low- and middle-income multilingual countries.

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