Grandparents play a significant role in childcare and one activity that frequently occurs within this context is story-reading. However, relatively little attention has been given to the potential part that grandparents can play in terms of language and literacy development of young children.This article reports on work investigating the interlingual and intercultural exchanges occurring in a home setting in East London. In particular, it focuses on how the traditional heritage pattern of story and rhyme reading by a grandmother of Bengali origin is fused with practices experienced by her six-year old grandchild.The data reveal not only the multiple worlds inhabited by the grandchild during story-reading but also the syncretism of these worlds on a number of levels.This article contributes to the small but growing body of investigation into the reading styles occurring within families from different cultural backgrounds.
In this paper we look at three identity positions salient in research of young people studying in complementary schools in Leicester, a large linguistically and ethnically diverse city in the East Midlands, England. Our discussion of identity focuses on three identity positions: multicultural, heritage and learner. The first two of these are linked to discussions on ethnicity as a social category. We explore the fluidity and stability of ethnicity as a social description in interview transcripts of young people at complementary schools. In addition, the paper explores another, more emergent identity salient in the two schools, that of ‘learner identity’. The research can be characterised as adopting a linguistic ethnographic approach using a team of ethnographers. Data was collected for 20 weeks by four researchers and consists of fieldnotes, interviews and audio recordings of classroom interactions. We consider the importance of ambiguity and certainty in students’ conceptualisation of themselves around ethnicity and linguistic diversity and look at the institutional role complementary schools play in the production of these and successful learner identities. We explore how complementary schools privilege and encourage these particular identity positionings in their endorsement of flexible bilingualism. Overall, we argue that complementary schools allowed the children a safe haven for exploring ethnic and linguistic identities while producing opportunities for performing successful learner identity. Published (publisher's copy) Peer Reviewed