Intergenerational learning between children and grandparents in East London

The study set out to investigate learning events taking place between young children and grandparents in London's East End, both in activities where older people have traditionally provided support (such as storytelling) and in the newer areas of information and communication technology where children have competences which their grandparents would like to access. This area of family learning is growing in significance as grandparents are increasingly taking on a childcare role in different extended family structures. Grandparents’ own learning needs must also be taken into account in the government’s lifelong learning agenda

Intergenerational Learning Events Around the Computer: A Site for Linguistic and Cultural Exchange

The computer is widely recognised as a cultural tool with the potential to enhance learning, and children are considered to develop ICT skills with particular facility. However, young children still require assistance in order to gain the maximum educational benefit. This study investigates how such assistance was given to 3–6 year olds by their grandparents in Sylheti/Bengali-speaking families and monolingual Englishspeaking families living in East London. A multimodal analysis of video-recorded computer activities reveals the reciprocity of teaching and learning taking place between the generations. In each case, grandparents and grandchildren combined their resources in order to negotiate the activity, with adults usually providing knowledge of literacy and numeracy whilst children helpedwith computer skills. The intergenerational exchange was especially evident in Sylheti/Bengali-speaking families, where grandparents were less familiarwith English orwith the computer and operated bilingually with their grandchildren to co-construct learning. However, the support offered by grandparents was found to have common elements in all families, as they helped children to structure the learning event, maintain concentration and accomplish tasks relying on linguistic and cultural knowledge

Gardening with grandparents: an early engagement with the science curriculum

In many cultures, elders are revered within the extended family as a source of wisdom gained from long experience. In Western societies, this role has been marginalised by changes in family structure, and grandparents' significant contribution to children's upbringing often goes unacknowledged. A research study with families of three- to six-year-olds in East London reveals how grandparents from a variety of cultural backgrounds passed on knowledge about growing fruit and vegetables to their grandchildren through joint gardening activities. Children learned to identify different plants, and to understand conditions and stages of plant growth. Grandparents from Bangladesh introduced children to a wide range of fruits and vegetables, and concepts were reinforced through bilingual communication. Analysis shows that these intergenerational learning encounters fostered children's scientific knowledge in ways that supported and extended curriculum work in the early years

Snow White in different guises: Interlingual and intercultural exchanges between grandparents and young children at home in East London

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

Different spaces: Learning and literacy with children and their grandparents in east London homes

This paper investigates informal learning, literacy and language development occurring in the home through exchanges between children of three to six years of age and their grandparents in Sylheti/Bengali-speaking families of Bangladeshi origin and monolingual English-speaking families of mixed ethnicity living in east London. A survey identifying the range of learning activities taking place in and around the home is reported and extracts from case study material from nine families obtained through interviews, video-recording and scrapbooks are explored in terms of the patterns of interaction, the kinds of knowledge exchanged and the discursive opportunities opened up in this process. The findings are interpreted in relation to sociocultural theory where the understandings and skills held by both adults and children can be regarded as contributing to learning as a joint enterprise. The relevance of the exchanges is considered in relation to the shifts between the discursive spaces in which language learning occurs