Play involves diverse meaning-making for young children and their families. These videos are from an intergenerational family practices project conducted in Australia during 2021-2022. The research team undertook intergenerational group interviews and filmed family play activities in addition to collecting video-clips and photos of young children’s play from six families.
Sara and Rina
In this short video Sara and Rina talk about how Sara is raising Nina, her young daughter, multilingually in Australia with Italian as her first language. The family has a language policy of Italian at home with Sara and her extended family and Spanish with Sara’s husband (exposure to English outside the home or when speaking to visitors who use English)
Rini and Ghina
In this video Rini, as a mother talks about the languages she used growing up in Indonesia. Her eight-year-old daughter Ghina shares the language choices she is making after arriving in Australia with her family just over a year ago.
Generational Exchange
This video shows how family’s play interactions are complex and unique to a family’s everyday language ecology. The value and power of generational exchange is illustrated in the video and how it supports young children’s language learning and development leading to continuity and transformations in the types of language learning that takes place.