The importance of capturing hearts and minds : the impact of parental ideologies in supporting children's minority language acquisition in the education system

Birnie, Ingeborg (2024) The importance of capturing hearts and minds : the impact of parental ideologies in supporting children's minority language acquisition in the education system. Living Languages, 3 (1). 150 - 169. 8. ISSN 2831-3488 (https://doi.org/10.7275/livinglanguages.2004)

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Abstract

Gaelic is an endangered indigenous language of Scotland. As intergeneration language transmission has declined, the education system has increasingly become one of the main foci of the formal language management initiatives, in particular Gaelic Medium Education (GME): an immersion programme focussing on naturalistic language acquisition through the delivery of content in the target language. The sociolinguistic profile of the Gaelic language in Scotland means that most, if not all, children entering GME are English-dominant and live in homes and communities where English is the main language of interactions, with the education system the only domain of Gaelic language exposure, input, and use of the language in these young people. This article discusses the findings of a small-scale study, conducted in one GME setting in the north of Scotland during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. The extended school closures and the subsequent expectations around home learning exposed the complexities and tensions in the ideologies of parents towards GME: on the one hand having made an active choice to send their children to be educated through the medium of Gaelic, but, on the other, also experiencing feelings of invalidation as educational partners in not being able to support their children's learning. This duplicity negatively affected the Gaelic language acquisition and attitudes of the children on their return to in-person learning, which has long term implications for future Gaelic language use.

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