Child language brokering in school
Summary
The primary aim of the project is to provide an evidence base for more sensitive and effective practice and more carefully articulated school policies on the use of pupils as language brokers (translators) for their own parents and others in school. There is substantial family migration into and across Europe. One of the challenges the teachers and parents often face is the lack of a shared language for communicating about the school's expectations and the children's needs. Few schools have access to professional interpreting facilities across the range of home languages spoken by their parents, and only limited use can be made of bilingual teaching and support staff for interpreting. Because children often learn the host language much more quickly than their parents, increasing numbers of children and young people contribute to family life by acting as child language brokers (CLBs) for their parents.
Methods
We are investigating two groups who we expect to bring distinctive and complementary perspectives to the topic - teachers in schools in multilingual areas and young adults who acted as language brokers in the course of their own school career (ex-CLBs). The teachers are from both the primary and secondary school sector from across London, the South East and the East Midlands. The young adults are recruited from a university known to have a culturally diverse make-up of students.
For each group the study will involve an on-line survey of a substantial number of respondents (Phase 1) followed by an interview study that explores detailed questions in greater depth with a small number of selected respondents (Phase 2).