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7. Conclusions and Implications

Suggestions for further consideration or research have already been signalled at several points of this study. Here we gather them into three main areas: further research, teacher development and pedagogy, and policy issues at local or national level.

7.1 Original Research Aims

In this study, our original research aims were:

• To analyse the reactions and responses of children from ethnic minority and indigenous Scottish communities to a range of Scottish texts.

This has been achieved through the methodology outlined in Section 5 and the findings analysed in Section 6 above.

• To explore how these children deal with the multiple literacies that are part of their transition between cultures.

Our focus on popular and children's genres, on the pupils' library choices and home texts in 6.2.2, and on their home use of electronic communication and learning in 6.2.3 provided data for reflection here

• To find out how children's identities can be developed or reinforced by books set in the culture in which they now live.

Our focus on intertextual reading skills [6.3.2], questioning the text [6.3.6], the focus on Scots language issues [6.4], Scottish themes [6.5] and especially the revisiting of 'stories of origin' within the 'third space' of the Scottish text [6.6] allowed the children to discuss and develop their changing identities in a structured and supportive framework.

This led us to ask further questions:

• Are there particular issues of Scots language and usage in Scottish texts that impact upon new learners?

Some issues are addressed in 6.4, within the largely positive experience of engagement with Scots language through classroom texts.

• To what extent do children interpret their new culture in either a positive or a negative light?

Perceptions of Scotland and its people are mixed [6.1.2], but school is experienced as a positive, safe and supportive environment.

• Do particular characters and incidents in texts, or humour and morals, relate in any way to their own cultures and if so, how?

There was an enthusiastic, sometimes subtle and always sensible engagement with the chosen texts [6.3.4, 6.3.6, 6.3.7] and frequent cross-reference to their earlier experience in other cultures.

• How do children who consider themselves as 'Scottish' respond to the portrayal of their own culture in such texts?

Again there was an engaged and sometimes thoughtful response to these texts and the language used in them [6.4].

• What barriers do the language and pictures raise or break down?

Illustration proved crucial in 'reading' unfamiliar texts and discussing them [6.3.8], but more research needs to be done on how different cultural groups make sense of pictures.

• What does it mean to be bi-cultural in a country like Scotland where national identity is itself in a process of change and self-definition?

Making sense of identity is complex [6.6] and we found that the children were forthcoming on some of the tensions that their family and social contexts created.

7.2 Research Recommendations

Findings and strategies from previous research provided the platform for developing our approach in the Scottish context described in Section 2. Although some of the research methodology follows earlier studies on literacy and reader-response, the nature of the subjects and the context of the research made it necessary to create a new methodological approach. This approach involved using Scottish texts but also questions and activities that were aimed at pupils with a particular level of knowledge of English language and English/Scottish culture in general. In addition, some of them were also designed to be used within a whole class context that included indigenous Scottish pupils. We believe that these methods provided good results, not only for the pupils but also for research data.

Because little research has been done previously in this context, our study has merely begun what should be a deeper exploration of:

• domestic and community language learning including home texts in different languages and children's self-education in these languages as well as English
• the intersections of home and school literacies, including the role of older siblings as mediators and parental perceptions of education and literacy and of English/Scots language and culture
• early learners (children in the first stage of primary) from ethnic minority families and emergent literacy including their response to learning to read in a language different from their home language
• the influence of popular culture and media, both Scottish and in the heritage language(s), on family literacies
• the mediated literacies of picture books through the analysis of text and illustration with children of different ages and stages
• the role of books by national and international authors which deal with issues of identity, migration and change
• the experience of asylum/ethnic minority bilingualism as it meets the 'bilingualism' of the Scottish school context, with Scots used in the playground and Standard Scottish English in classroom pedagogy
• the provision of spaces where 'language and life histories' can be heard, and 'self-authorship' can begin in a new country
• the ways in which native peers interact with ethnic minority pupils in providing support in language learning and also cultural guidance
• the use of Scots language as a 'neutral venue' or third frame of reference where the language of power and the language of relative powerlessness or poverty can encourage equality (since everyone is a relative stranger to its use in the classroom context)
• the use of whole-class sessions that may offer a 'metalinguistic' but also community-based focus on language use and language variety
• the focus on 'ephemera' of comics, videos, drawings, speech-bubbles, both in the texts chosen and in the writing/drawing activities, developing literacy awareness from the texts that migrant children see as accessible within their new culture, and as having social currency with classmates
• the role libraries play in providing a space and access to books and computers for ethnic minority children and their families, with a particular focus on information texts and genres
• the use of accents and oral features of story-telling, such as voice, first-person narrative or poetry, or moral issues arising from wrong decisions, to make an impact in terms of shared human experience are issues that relate not only to communication and understanding but also to the oral cultural heritages of migrant children.

There is also the possibility of putting the Scottish findings within wider frameworks following previous research studies. For example:

• examining continuities in response to Scottish language and culture by ethnic minority pupils in secondary schools (as in Dickson 2006), including the transitional aspects and tensions around language and identity (as in Singh Ghuman 1994, Saeed, Bland and Forbes 1999, Caulfield, Hill and Shelton 2005)
• case study and longitudinal approaches to particular children and their families (as in Pahl 2004);
• looking at visual literacy through the response of both native Scots and ethnic minority pupils to British picturebooks (as in Arizpe and Styles 2003, Arizpe 2006 and Arizpe and Styles 2008 forthcoming);
• exploring digital literacies including computer games and knowledge and use of communication technologies (as in Mackey 2007)
• focussing on the role of siblings and other 'guiding lights' in the teaching and learning of ethnic minority pupils and their families (as in Padmore 1994, Dyson 2003)
• examining class and group interactions in school where dialogue and discussion allowed pupils to share issues of identity and understanding of texts (as in Coulthard, Arizpe and Styles 2003)
• exploring Glasgow literacies through local communities and their links to ethnicity, immigration and school literacy history (as in Gregory and Williams 2000) as well as public library spaces for literacy (as in Petit 2001).

Several of these points have staff development implications for teachers, as outlined below.

7.3 Staff Development and Pedagogy

Galda and Beach (2001) argue that everything that teachers do in the classroom, the texts they choose and the tasks they assign, affects the transaction of students between cultures. They suggest that specific tools can be developed which help students reflect on the responses and connections they make. However, they also warn that while some of the 'cultural tools' which pupils bring to the classroom may be aligned to those of the teacher, others may be in opposition (Galda and Beach 2001: 71).

Our study had clear implications for staff development and pedagogy which relate to the issues raised by Galda and Beach. The educational issue which we highlighted was the use of Scottish children's texts. The texts we chose, the tasks we asked the pupils to carry out, and the discussions around these, helped all of the children to reflect on the world of each text but also on their own worlds. Sometimes their perceptions of aspects of these worlds were unexpected (for example, the interest and engagement in discussion of Scots and English language usage in the classroom). Reading and discussing such texts and the language they were written in was clearly a new experience for both teachers and pupils.

Despite apparent surface difficulties with orthography and dialect, both urban and rural, this approach allowed ethnic-minority pupils to:

• increase their knowledge of both English and Scots
• increase their knowledge of Scottish culture
• access and enjoy new texts which may have reflected their new context
• participate in a space where metalinguistic and cultural aspects could be freely discussed
• increase their confidence and self-esteem by being asked their opinions and being able to bring in aspects of their heritage culture to the school context.

Some of these benefits clearly also apply for the Scottish pupils who participated in the whole classroom sessions.

In part the neglect of Scottish texts relates to the history and status of Scots language, as outlined in the Introduction and Section 4. There is therefore a lack of confidence as well as a lack of professional knowledge about classroom texts and effective strategies among teachers. This has staff development implications for pre-service and in-service training, as do the other issues below:

• As internet and other electronic literacies figure in the home language development and language maintenance of many migrant pupils, the skills and opportunities for allowing them to use such resources for primary English learning should be further explored within schools.
• Home and heritage stories should be encouraged in the classroom, and teaching opportunities devised through topics and themes to make this possible. (Fables and folk tales, and illustrations of these, provide a useful starting point.) This may involve both in-service and resource provision or subsidy.
• Surprisingly subtle interpretation of narrative is possible in children whose English is still quite limited, but the role of interactive, teacher-led whole-class and small-group discussion seems crucial within that process. Teachers' skills in such direct interactive discussion of character, consequence, motivation, moral/theme, textual illustration and overall impact of texts should continue to be developed. (This relates to HMIE findings about the effective teaching of reading for all children.)
• Consideration should be given, where staffing allows, to ongoing, supportive small-group work on narrative fiction with immigrant pupils, in a separate room or open space, for fairly brief periods of 20-30 minutes, even after they have attained enough 'survival English' to benefit from mainstream class lessons. Group work may alternate 'all immigrant' groups with 'all Scots' and 'mixed' groups, to allow emotional connections to be made with past and new experience, within the shared context of story and character.
• Staff development on the classroom use of Scottish resources, including Scots language texts, and on sustaining dialogue around fiction and poetry, should be encouraged, perhaps through links with local universities. This will also involve the development of a confident use of regional dialects in reading such texts aloud to children (and developing an informed, knowledgeable outlook on language variation in relation to social context in Scotland).
• Pre-service and in-service courses in bilingual learning should become a more recognised aspect of teacher development, as ethnic diversity increasingly becomes a feature of Scotland' communities and schools.

7.4 Policy Issues

Immigrant and also Scottish children are influenced by negative stereotypes of Scottish behaviour, affected by media images as well as by personal experience. This relates to current concerns to develop and foster 'confident individuals', 'responsible citizens' and 'effective contributors' through the emerging Curriculum for Excellence.

• There should be a continuing school emphasis on elements of kindness, welcome, and support towards 'new Scots', with involvement from the pupils themselves in articulating this for others, where possible through the use of electronic technologies and the expressive arts.

This project' activities appear to have had a positive impact on many youngsters (not only migrants) who experience some disjuncture between the language codes of home, playground and classroom literacy expectations. Carefully selected and confidently read and enacted Scottish texts can benefit both native Scottish and immigrant pupils, because of the contexts these provide for quite wide-ranging discussions of language, culture and heritage. This again relates to the ACfE aims above, and also to the current developments and consultation towards A Strategy for Scotland' Languages.

• Knowledge about language should be enhanced through classroom provision of suitable texts, so that issues of identity and social change in Scotland can be imaginatively experienced and sensitively discussed by teachers and pupils.

Teachers, through school leaders, should also continue to be made aware of some possibly radically different parental or pupil views about education among migrant families. Again, this issue engages with ACfE aims and also the Executive' concerns to engage the intellectual and creative potential of 'new Scots'.

• Deriving from earlier school experience of parents and/or children, there will be issues concerning teacher-pupil relationships, pedagogy and discipline or punishment in schools which might impact on home-school communication.

The children in our study often had roles as interpreters of language and culture for their siblings and parents.

• This role should be recognised, praised and supported in home and school contexts.

Recognition, praise and support should also be given to the school staff who are doing so much on a daily basis to ensure a positive and safe environment in which these pupils can grow. This is an aspect of their new Scottish culture which immigrant and asylum-seeking children have no difficulty at all in reading and truly appreciating at a human level.

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