Parents' Views on Testing a Plurilingual Digital Platform in the Classroom and at Home: What to Keep in Mind for School and Family Collaboration

Abstract

As part of a research project, a plurilingual digital platform was made accessible to both teachers in the classroom and parents at home. This platform contains 11 children’s books in French written by Quebec’s authors (Canada), as well as their translations into more than 20 languages. The platform aims to be inclusive of families’ linguistic diversity and to contribute to language awareness. The purpose of this communication is to document parents’ views on the testing of this platform. Using a qualitative approach, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 parents whose children are in the first year of elementary school. Parents had diverse migration and life histories, and their linguistic repertories were varied. Implications of the research. Our findings highlight parents’ varied positions on the recognition of families’ linguistic backgrounds in the school environment and their use in educational activities, especially in a context where laws concerning the use of languages other than the language of instruction in schools are becoming stricter in Quebec. Our results also highlight the added value of a tool that can be used both at school and at home to support school-family collaboration, sometimes remotely.

Presenters

Josée Charette
Professor, Special Education and Training, University of Quebec in Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Catherine Gosselin Lavoie
Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Montreal, Quebec, Canada

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Education and Learning Worlds of Differences

KEYWORDS

Plurilingual Digital Platform, School-Family collaboration