Macleroy, Vicky; Anderson, Jim and Chung, Yu-Chiao. 2024. Grassroots policymaking in practice: including heritage languages in the critical connections project through agency, activism, and alternative voices. Current Issues in Language Planning, 25(5), pp. 590-611. ISSN 1466-4208 [Article]

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Abstract or Description

This article examines the Critical Connections Multilingual Digital Storytelling Project through the lens of Language Policy and Planning (LPP) and considers the situation of heritage language learning within the policy on language education. We present our project as grassroots policymaking in practice and demonstrate how, through deep and meaningful collaboration, researchers, teachers, parents/carers, and students can exercise bottom-up agency to address key issues in learning languages and developing multilingual literacy. Our interdisciplinary approach embeds interculturality within all stages of the language learning process creating spaces that foster empathy, activist citizenship, and possibilities for a more sustainable future. We interrogate our Critical Connections Project and argue that this approach to LPP provides an alternative model of interculturally oriented critical cosmopolitan education which validates multilingual identities. We show how digital technology, virtual communities, and a growing concern for social justice have shaped the project and discuss how we adopted a critical ethnographic approach. In looking at purposes, principles and means in our project, the digital stories themselves are analysed and presented as vibrant data. To conclude, we engage specifically with the implications of our research for heritage languages and LPP. Finally, we make a series of recommendations for heritage language planning and policy.

Item Type:	Article
Identification Number (DOI):	https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2023.2221151
Data Access Statement:	This research project has ethical approval from our university ethics board and signed consent from all research participants that their digital stories, photographs, recorded interviews and film footage can be used for educational purposes.
Keywords:	virtual communities; digital storytelling; multilingual pedagogy; activist citizenship; arts-based
Departments, Centres and Research Units:	Educational Studies Educational Studies > Centre for Language, Culture and Learning
Dates:	Date Event 30 May 2023 Accepted 8 June 2023 Published Online 2024 Published
Item ID:	33705
Date Deposited:	29 Jun 2023 15:36
Last Modified:	16 Sep 2024 09:29
Peer Reviewed:	Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.
URI:	https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/33705

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