It’s more the invisible benefits – multilingual parents’ experiences of immersion education and their reasons for choosing immersion
Ní Dhiorbháin, AshlingORCID: 0000-0001-5307-2516, Nic Aindriú, SinéadORCID: 0000-0001-8959-253X, Connaughton-Crean, Lorraine and Ó Duibhir, PádraigORCID: 0000-0003-2316-027X
(2023)
It’s more the invisible benefits – multilingual parents’ experiences of immersion education and their reasons for choosing immersion.
Language and Education
.
ISSN 0950-0782
The participation of multilingual children in minority language immersion programmes is under-researched internationally. The Republic of
Ireland (RoI) has become a linguistically and culturally diverse society.
In the RoI, parents have the opportunity to educate their child in
English-medium or Irish-medium (IM) schools. However, the cohort of
multilingual children attending IM schools is very small. This study
investigated the reasons why parents who spoke a home language
other than Irish or English chose to enrol their children in IM primary
education. It also investigated parents’ perceptions of the benefits of
this form of education. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken
with 15 parents from a variety of language backgrounds. It was found
that parents were motivated to enrol their child in IM primary schools
to provide them with the opportunity to learn a variety of languages
at an early age. Benefits associated with learning multiple languages
and immersion in Irish culture and heritage were seen as the main
advantages of IM education. A minority of parents chose an IM school
when there was no space for their child in an English-medium school.
Parents reported that they did not experience significant challenges in
IM immersion. Recommendations arise to support the participation of
multilingual families in immersion education.