Cotutelle Université de Montréal - Université Grenoble Alpes / Des vagues d’immigration successives ont fait du Québec le lieu d’une importante diversité linguistique et culturelle. Ainsi, de nombreux élèves bi/plurilingues sont maintenant scolarisés dans les classes ordinaires des écoles francophones québécoises, notamment au secondaire. Pour ces élèves, l’apprentissage de l’écriture est bien souvent un défi de taille. L’apprentissage de l’orthographe grammaticale (OG) du français, plus spécifiquement, constitue un obstacle important au développement de leur compétence à écrire. Cet obstacle se présente d’ailleurs pour l’ensemble des élèves scolarisés dans cette langue. Les accords verbaux et adjectivaux de même que le choix des terminaisons verbales en /E/ sont entre autres la source de difficultés marquées (Brissaud, Chevrot et Lefrançois, 2006 ; Manesse et Cogis, 2007). La présente recherche doctorale vise donc à contribuer à l’identification de dispositifs favorisant l’apprentissage de l’OG française d’élèves bi/plurilingues scolarisés en classe ordinaire au secondaire en milieu pluriethnique et plurilingue. Conçues en réponse aux difficultés des élèves en contexte de langue première, certaines interventions tendent à avoir des effets positifs sur leur apprentissage de l’OG, telles que les dictées métacognitives (Nadeau et Fisher, 2014) et une approche intégrée d’enseignement de l’orthographe (Allal et al., 2001). Dans notre thèse, nous avons conçu un dispositif qui s’inspire de ces interventions et, afin de prendre en compte les spécificités des milieux scolaires pluriethniques et plurilingues, nous avons intégré des approches plurilingues à ce dispositif. Ces approches sont susceptibles d’engager les élèves bi/plurilingues dans leurs apprentissages et de favoriser le développement de capacités métalinguistiques, en plus de soutenir d’éventuels transferts entre les langues (Cummins, 2009 ; de Pietro, 2003 ; Moore, 2006). C’est ainsi que nous avons conçu un « dispositif plurilingue » d’enseignement de l’OG française. Ce dispositif allie la production de textes identitaires plurilingues (Cummins et Early, 2011) et la mise en œuvre de dictées métacognitives soutenues par des approches plurilingues, qui prennent la forme d’activités d’éveil aux langues (Armand, 2014 ; Auger, 2014) et de pratiques translinguistiques (Candelier et de Pietro, 2008 ; García et Kano, 2014). Nous avons testé l’hypothèse selon laquelle ce dispositif plurilingue favoriserait le développement de la compétence des élèves en OG en français. À cette fin, nous l’avons mis à l’essai auprès d’élèves bi/plurilingues de première secondaire (groupe expérimental 1 ; n = 79), puis nous avons comparé ses effets avec ceux d’un « dispositif monolingue » d’enseignement de l’OG (groupe expérimental 2 ; n = 70), qui allie approche intégrée et dictées métacognitives, en français seulement, et avec ceux de pratiques habituelles d’enseignement de l’OG (groupe contrôle ; n = 46). Nous avons évalué la compétence en OG de l’ensemble des élèves au moyen d’une dictée et d’une production écrite guidée. Des entretiens métagraphiques réalisés auprès d’un nombre ciblé de participants des trois groupes (au total, n = 24) ont également permis une compréhension plus fine de l’évolution de leurs procédures graphiques. La passation de ces outils s’est effectuée à trois reprises: avant l’intervention (prétest), immédiatement après l’intervention (posttest immédiat) et cinq semaines après l’intervention (posttest différé). Au terme de notre recherche, nous constatons que le dispositif plurilingue apporte une contribution significativement plus grande au développement de la compétence en OG en français que des pratiques habituelles d’enseignement de l’OG. De plus, ce dispositif contribue tout autant, voire plus, à ce développement que le dispositif monolingue, alors que les effets propres au dispositif plurilingue se présentent notamment sous la forme d’un ancrage des apprentissages des élèves dans la durée. En effet, au posttest différé, seules les performances globales à la dictée des élèves du groupe expérimental1 sont significativement supérieures à celles des élèves au groupe contrôle. Quant aux performances globales à la production écrite guidée, celles des élèves des groupes expérimentaux 1 et 2 sont significativement supérieures à celles des élèves du groupe contrôle. Enfin, au moyen des données tirées des entretiens métagraphiques, nous constatons l’existence d’un lien entre les plus grands progrès dans les performances globales des élèves des groupes expérimentaux 1 et 2 et l’augmentation du recours à des procédures morphosyntaxiques et à des procédures de remplacement, une tendance qui ne se dégage pas des résultats obtenus dans le groupe contrôle. / Successive waves of immigrants have turned the province of Quebec into a place of great linguistic and cultural diversity. Thus, many bi/plurilingual students are now attending regular classes in Quebec’s French-language schools, particularly in high school. For these students, learning to write is often a challenge. The grammatical morphology (GM) of French, more specifically, constitutes an important obstacle to the development of their writing skills, an obstacle shared by all students of French regardless of their mother- tongue. Verbal and adjective agreements as well as the choice of verbal endings in /E/ are some of the greatest difficulties (Chevrot, Brissaud & Lefrançois, 2006; Manesse & Cogis, 2007). The present doctoral research aims to contribute to the identification of approaches promoting the learning of the French GM of bi/plurilingual students attending regular high school classes in a multi-ethnic and multilingual environment. In order to address students’ difficulties in a first language learning context, certain teaching practices, such as an integrated approach to teaching spelling and metacognitive dictations, tend to have positive effects on students’ GM development (Allal et al., 2001; Nadeau & Fisher, 2014). In our thesis, we designed an approach inspired by these practices. Furthermore, in order to take into account the specificities of multi-ethnic and multilingual school environments, we integrated plurilingual pedagogical practices to this approach. Those practices are likely to engage bi/plurilingual students in their learning and to promote the development of metalinguistic abilities, in addition to supporting possible transfers between languages (de Pietro, 2003; Moore 2006; Cummins 2009). Thus, we tailored a “plurilingual approach” for teaching French GM. This approach combines the writing of plurilingual identity texts (Cummins & Early, 2011) and metacognitive dictations supported by plurilingual pedagogical practices. Those practices consisted of language awareness activities (Armand, 2014; Auger, 2014) and translinguistic practices (Candelier & de Pietro, 2008; Garcia & Kano, 2014). We verified the hypothesis according to which our plurilingual approach would promote the development of student’s GM in French. To this end, we tested this plurilingual approach with bi/plurilingual first-year secondary students (experimental group 1, n = 79). We then compared its effects with those of a “monolingual approach” for teaching French GM (experimental group 2, n = 70), which combines an integrated approach of teaching spelling and metacognitive dictations, in French only, and with those of usual GM teaching practices (control group, n = 46). We assessed the GM skills of all students through a dictation and a guided written production. Metagraphic interviews with a targeted number of participants from all three groups (in total, n = 24) also provided a deeper understanding of the evolution of their graphical procedures. These data collection tools were used three times: before the experimentation (pre-test), immediately after the experimentation (immediate post-test) and five weeks after the experimentation (delayed post-test). At the end of our research, we found that the plurilingual approach makes a significantly greater contribution to the development of GM in French than usual teaching practices. Moreover, this approach contributes as much, if not more, to this development as the monolingual approach, while the effects specific to the plurilingual approach involve the rooting of the skills learned by students over time. Indeed, at the delayed posttest, only the dictation overall performances of students in experimental group 1 are significantly higher than those of students in the control group. As for written production overall performances, both those in experimental groups 1 and 2 are significantly higher than those in the control group. Finally, using data from the metagraphic interviews, we find a link between the greatest progress in the overall performances of students in experimental groups 1 and 2 and the increase in the use of morphosyntactic procedures and substitution procedures, a trend that does not emerge from the results obtained in the control group.

Using a phenomenological approach, this qualitative study examined the perspectives of Latino parents and their involvement in the decision of their child to enroll in an advanced mathematics course in sixth grade. Since enrollment in Algebra I in high school is said to be a strong predictor of college attainment and with the growing number of Latino students across the nation, this study has the potential to help district and campus leaders establish whole-school systems for communicating with Latino parents to encourage their children to enroll in advanced mathematics courses at earlier grades. Participants in this study included four sixth-grade students enrolled in an advanced mathematics course, four enrolled in regular mathematics, their mother or father, two mathematics teachers, a school counselor, and two district administrators. Data analyzed included audio recordings of semi-structured interviews of each of the participants. The findings suggested that the district has proactively developed a systematic process of creating that includes six data points to create a student profile of students that will do well in advanced mathematics. This process is helping the district close the gap between total Latino school enrollment and the enrollment of Latino students in advanced mathematics. The findings also suggested that specific communication with parents about the importance of enrollment trajectories might influence the enrollment of students into advanced mathematics courses at earlier grades.

No description available.

Au Québec, particulièrement à Montréal, un nombre important d’enfants bi/plurilingues de maternelle cinq ans sont directement intégrés en classe ordinaire. Pour ces enfants qui poursuivent le développement de leurs compétences langagières dans deux ou plusieurs langues simultanément, il est primordial d’adapter les pratiques enseignantes afin de tenir compte de leurs besoins. La lecture partagée (LP) d’albums de littérature de jeunesse est une activité largement reconnue pour favoriser le développement langagier oral et écrit (Cunningham et Zibulsky, 2011; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). Tout en favorisant le plaisir de la lecture (Dupin de St-André et al., 2015), cette activité permet d’amener progressivement l’enfant à établir des liens entre langage oral et écrit. Elle permet également de favoriser, entre autres, le développement des habiletés narratives (ex. : Pesco et Gagné, 2017; Roux-Baron, 2019), dimension discursive du développement langagier qui exerce une incidence sur l’apprentissage de l’écrit et, donc, la réussite scolaire. Dans la présente recherche doctorale, les paramètres d’une intervention de LP tenant compte des besoins des enfants bi/plurilingues en émergence pour favoriser le développement de leurs habiletés narratives ont été définis au moyen d’une recension des écrits. Ces paramètres ciblés ont été mis à l’essai dans le cadre d’une vaste recherche (Armand et al., 2017-2021) dans laquelle a eu lieu une intervention de LP au moyen de l’application Les Albums plurilingues ÉLODiL dans une perspective de collaboration école-famille. L’utilisation d’albums bi/plurilingues faisait partie des modalités identifiées pour favoriser, dans une optique inclusive (Cummins, 2021), le développement langagier d’enfants bi/plurilingues en émergence (Naqvi et al., 2012). Dans le cadre de cette recherche, notre contribution à l’intervention a consisté à concevoir et à mettre à l’essai des activités entourant la lecture des albums qui visaient spécifiquement le développement des habiletés narratives. Afin de documenter les effets de l’intervention sur l’évolution des habiletés narratives des enfants, nous avons recueilli, avant et après l’intervention, les productions d’un groupe d’enfants qui y a pris part (n=78) en recourant à deux types de tests standardisés. Les productions ont été comparées à celles d’enfants qui n’ont pas participé à l’intervention (n=35), mais dont les enseignant·es avaient reçu les mêmes albums en français et en version papier uniquement. Pour compléter le portrait, nous avons également recueilli le rappel du récit d’un des albums exploités dans le cadre de l’intervention auprès des enfants du groupe expérimental (n=70). L’analyse des résultats obtenus au moyen des outils standardisés révèle que l’intervention de LP au moyen d’albums plurilingues intégrant des activités en lien avec les habiletés narratives apporte une contribution positive à l’évolution de ces habiletés chez les enfants. Qui plus est, l’analyse qualitative des productions obtenues au moyen d’un outil conçu à partir d’un des albums de l’intervention, mise en relation avec la description présente dans les écrits scientifiques des habiletés narratives d’enfants monolingues du même groupe d’âge, tend à démontrer que les enfants bi/plurilingues en émergence, ici dans le contexte montréalais pluriethnique et plurilingue de notre étude, ne sont pas « en retard » par rapport aux enfants monolingues. / In Quebec, particularly in Montreal, a significant number of bi/plurilingual children in five-year-old kindergarten are directly integrated into regular classrooms (with or without French learning support services). For these emerging bi/plurilingual children who are continuing to develop their language skills in two or more languages simultaneously, it is essential to adapt educative practices to consider their needs, particularly with regard to language development, which is one of the areas of global development. Shared reading of children’s literature is one of the activities which is widely recognized by the scientific and practical community to promote oral and written language skills (Cunningham & Zibulsky, 2011; National Early Literacy Panel, 2008; Turgeon, 2018). This significant activity promotes the pleasure of reading (Dupin de St-André et al., 2015) and allows children to gradually make connections between oral and written language. Among other things, shared reading and the interactions that surround it promote the development of narrative skills (e.g., Lever & Sénéchal, 2011; Nielsen & Friesen, 2012; Pesco & Gagné, 2017; Roux-Baron, 2019), a discursive dimension of language development that has an impact on literacy development and, by the same token, academic success. In this doctoral research, we identified through a literature review the parameters of a shared reading intervention that would consider emerging bi/plurilingual needs in order to foster the development of their narrative skills. These parameters were tested as part of a broader research (Armand et al. 2017-2021) in which a shared reading intervention took place using a web-based children’s literature application, Les Albums plurilingues ÉLODiL, through a school-family collaboration. The use of bi/plurilingual book was one of the modalities identified to promote, from an additive (Lambert, 1975) and inclusive (Cummins, 2021) point of view, the language development of emerging bi/plurilingual children (Naqvi et al., 2012). As part of this doctoral research, our contribution to the intervention consisted of designing and testing activities surrounding the shared reading of children’s book that were specifically aimed at the development of narrative skills. In order to document the effects of the intervention on the children’s narrative skill evolution, before and after it, we collected narratives from a group of children who took part in the intervention (n=78). To this aim, we used two standardized tests (a narrative production task from a sequence of illustrations and a story recall task). The productions were compared to those of children who did not participate in the intervention (n=35). In this control group, the teachers, who used children’s literature in their classroom, received the same children’s book, but in French and in paper version only. In order to complete the portrait, we also collected from the children in the experimental group (n=70) the recall of the story of one of the books used in the intervention. This allowed us to provide a qualitative overview of the narrative skills of children in a regular five-year-old kindergarten classroom in a plurilingual context. The analysis of the results obtained with the standardized tools reveals that the shared reading intervention, using plurilingual books and integrating the activities we implemented in relation to narrative skills, brings a positive contribution to the evolution of the narrative skills of the children who took part. Moreover, the qualitative analysis of the portrait of the children’s narrative skills, put in relation with the description of the narrative skills of “monolingual” children of the same age group presented in the scientific literature, tends to show that emerging bi/plurilingual children are not “lagging behind”.

Content-based language instruction has gained widespread acceptance as an effective approach in a range of educational settings for adults and children. It is premised on the belief that language and content are inextricably linked and that learning is enhanced through an integrated approach. Yet the nature of the relationship between content and language, and how integration can be achieved in the content-based language classroom, continue to be points of divergence for both researchers and practitioners. One approach to this question draws on research in form-focused instruction (FFI), which describes various instructional options that draw learners’ attention to form in primarily meaning and content-based classrooms. While widely accepted that FFI has a positive impact on language learning outcomes in a variety of contexts, FFI research in content-based language programs for adults has been limited. This study investigated the effect and effectiveness of FFI in a content-based language program designed to prepare adult newcomers to Canada for employment in a specific workplace sector. Two groups of adult learners participated in the study. One group of 16 adults received content-based instruction integrated with FFI while the other group of 20 adults received the same content-based instruction with a focus on meaning only. A quasi-experimental, pre-test/post-test/delayed post-test design was adopted for this comparative study in order to measure language and content outcomes. Language measures included an error correction task, a cloze task, and oral production tasks. Content outcomes were measured via content tests. In addition, a retrospective awareness protocol was designed to assess learners’ awareness of language and content in their instruction and to explore the relationship between this awareness and language development. ANOVA and ANCOVA results indicated that there was no advantage for the participants receiving form-focused instruction on language outcomes but a significant benefit on the content knowledge tests. Analysis of the retrospective report data indicated that the participants were able to identify the focus of the instruction they received. However, no relationship between awareness of language and language development was found. These findings are discussed in light of previous research and in terms of their implications for content-based language instruction.

Content-based language instruction has gained widespread acceptance as an effective approach in a range of educational settings for adults and children. It is premised on the belief that language and content are inextricably linked and that learning is enhanced through an integrated approach. Yet the nature of the relationship between content and language, and how integration can be achieved in the content-based language classroom, continue to be points of divergence for both researchers and practitioners. One approach to this question draws on research in form-focused instruction (FFI), which describes various instructional options that draw learners’ attention to form in primarily meaning and content-based classrooms. While widely accepted that FFI has a positive impact on language learning outcomes in a variety of contexts, FFI research in content-based language programs for adults has been limited. This study investigated the effect and effectiveness of FFI in a content-based language program designed to prepare adult newcomers to Canada for employment in a specific workplace sector. Two groups of adult learners participated in the study. One group of 16 adults received content-based instruction integrated with FFI while the other group of 20 adults received the same content-based instruction with a focus on meaning only. A quasi-experimental, pre-test/post-test/delayed post-test design was adopted for this comparative study in order to measure language and content outcomes. Language measures included an error correction task, a cloze task, and oral production tasks. Content outcomes were measured via content tests. In addition, a retrospective awareness protocol was designed to assess learners’ awareness of language and content in their instruction and to explore the relationship between this awareness and language development. ANOVA and ANCOVA results indicated that there was no advantage for the participants receiving form-focused instruction on language outcomes but a significant benefit on the content knowledge tests. Analysis of the retrospective report data indicated that the participants were able to identify the focus of the instruction they received. However, no relationship between awareness of language and language development was found. These findings are discussed in light of previous research and in terms of their implications for content-based language instruction.