Through close and textured observation, this book takes us into children’s worlds where language learning is closely linked to social relations. Its frank engagement with theoretical and analytical dilemmas is fresh and fascinating, and points to new areas of study. The book has a rich, intensive ethnographical approach, and offers a beautifully rendered portrait of processes children encounter in their classroom every day.
Asta Cekaite, Linköping University, Sweden
Absolutely fantastic! Everything about this book is compelling – the lucidly formulated case for a social view of language learning, the unfolding account of this perspective in Bernstein’s original research in a multilingual pre-K classroom, and, most of all, the stories of the four four-year-old refugees, Padma, Hande, Rashmi, and Kritika, and their distinct journeys into the English language. This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about language education.
Betsy Rymes, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Bernstein's book provides a richly descriptive account of the profoundly social process of classroom language learning by young learners [...] it offers an inspired model of ethnographic research which will be of interest to researchers and teachers alike, and to parents who wish to understand the learning journeys of their children as emergent bilinguals.
Mayyer Ling, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Language Teaching for Young Learners 3:2