During COVID-19 the school has entered the home in a unique way, where the parents act as primary guides who support the children's learning at home (UNESCO, 2020). Even though research has shown that the lockdown has offered mostly favourable conditions for the heritage language learning (Afreed & Norton, 2021; Sheng et al. 2021), not much is known about the way the learning space in a multilingual family has been organized and affected by the pandemic conditions and about the dynamics between heritage and majority language in these families.
Given the intense space and time sharing that families have experienced during COVID-19, the present study aims to explore how the pandemic conditions affected the acquisition of heritage and majority languages and the dynamics of this interaction. In particular, we aim to explore: (1) what were the families' experiences of heritage and majority language learning during COVID-19 intense period of the lockdown and (2) what new opportunities the COVID-19 era provided to the multilingual families in the five countries with different lockdown policies.
In order to answer our research questions, a qualitative study with 50 semi-structured interviews (ten in each country) was conducted during spring 2022. We employed interpretative phenomenological analysis. An overarching theme of finding new (technical) solutions to enhance language learning was identified. Constant access to digital technologies provided new opportunities for learning the languages, for instance remote lessons in a heritage language and even individual tutorials. However, when formal schooling moves home, the parents become not only the guides who support the children's learning at home (UNESCO, 2020), but rather, the learning of both heritage and majority languages becomes the primary responsibility of some parents (or viewed as such). The pedagogical and research implications of the lessons distilled from the intense period of the lockdown will be discussed.
References
Afreen, A., & Norton, B. (2021). COVID-19 and heritage language learning.
https://rsc-src.ca/en/voices/covid-19-and-heritage-language-learning
Sheng, L., Wang, D., Walsh, C., Heisler, L., Li, X., & Su, P. L. (2021). The bilingual home language boost through the lens of COVID-19 pandemic. Frontiers in Psychology, 3012.
UNESCO (2020). UNESCO COVID-19 Education Response – Education Sector issue notes no.23 April 2020 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373512
