Parents’ reasons for community language schools: insight from a high-shift, non-visible, middle-class community

Abstract

In the past decade, there has been increased scholarly interest in the purpose and functions of community language schools, also known as heritage, supplementary or complementary schools. In particular, previous studies have focused on schools operating in minority communities deriving from Asian and Eastern-European countries, showing that notions of identity and belonging to a ‘mother country’ are key purposes of these schools. However, community language schools in Australia operate in minority communities with diverse cultural, historical, social and migration histories and findings from other studies may not be generalisable to other community language schools. To broaden our understanding of the aims and purpose of these schools and to allow for meaningful comparisons, this study focuses on parents reasons for enrolling their children at a Swedish community language school in Australia, often described as a ‘high-shift’, ‘non-visible’ minority community. Seven parents were interviewed. Findings show that reasons for perpetuating Swedish language derived from notions of identity and belonging, but that parents also aimed for their children to invest in Swedish language as cultural capital valuable in Sweden, Australia and elsewhere.

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