Home language as a factor of social justice in schools

Abstract

Research in the field of education has proven that home language involvement in education is not only important for the development of student’s identity, but also has significant benefits for learning (Yuvayapan, 2019). This thesis aims to understand what multilingual pedagogies are in place in schools and why these are the practices the schools have chosen.

This thesis was conducted as a literature review of previous studies done on the topic of home language practices in schools. The literature on this topic is quite limited and many of the articles used in this thesis are case studies of specific schools. Due to this, the scope of this literature review is small, but it also works as an overview of existing literature and approaches it from a comparative point of view. The thesis uses Nieto’s (2018) model of multicultural education as a reference point to identify and compare the different practices schools have.

The overview of case studies suggests that although the benefits of home language involvement in classrooms are clear in research, the practices sill remain mostly monolingual. The monolingual practices are in most of the cases due to insufficient training and support provided for the educators as well as due to the negative attitudes towards home language exhibited by teachers. This review points to the need of further research on the topic as well as a need for increased provision of information and resources for schools about multilingual practices.