Summary information
Study title
Multilingualism and Multiliteracy: Raising Learning Outcomes in Challenging Contexts in Primary Schools Across India, 2016-2020
Creator
Tsimpli, I, University of Cambridge
Study number / PID
854548 (UKDA)
10.5255/UKDA-SN-854548 (DOI)
Data access
Restricted
Series
Not available
Abstract
The Multilingualism and Multiliteracy (MultiLila) project was a four-year research study (2016 –2020).It aimed to examine whether a match or mismatch between the child’s home language(s) and the school language affect learning outcomes while at the same time taking into other factors that can affect a child’s performance on basic school skills and more advanced, problem-solving and reasoning skills. Specifically, socioeconomic status, school site, urban vs. rural location and differences between two urban sites (Delhi and Hyderabad) were considered when evaluating learning outcomes in the project’s tasks. The project also sought to understand whether children who use more than one language in the home or children who live in linguistically highly diverse environments have better cognitive skills than children in monolingual or less diverse contexts. A variety of quantitative and qualitative data were collected over a period of four years. The data include children’s performance on the fourteen different tasks of literacy, numeracy, oral language, verbal reasoning, and cognitive tasks mentioned above. In addition, we collected data from the surveys and questionnaires used for teacher and head-teacher interviews.This innovative project examines the causes of low educational outcomes in schools in India where many children fail to achieve basic literacy and numeracy levels, while dropout rates, affecting girls more than boys, are very high. A starting point of this research is that bilingualism and multilingualism have revealed cognitive advantages and good learning skills in children raised in western societies. Multilingualism is the norm in India. However, rather than enjoying cognitive and learning advantages, multilingual Indian children show low levels of basic learning skills including critical thinking and problem-solving. This project is innovative in seeking to disentangle the causes of this paradox.
The project builds on Tsimpli's large scale (600K)...
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Keywords
Methodology
Data collection period
01/05/2016 - 31/07/2020
Country
India
Time dimension
Not availableAnalysis unit
Individual
Group
Universe
Not availableSampling procedure
Not availableKind of data
Numeric
Text
Audio
Data collection mode
Data was collected from children in Stds IV and V. The design of the study included a comparison between urban areas (Delhi and Hyderabad) with town and non-remote rural areas in Patna, while urban children are further divided into those attending schools in slum and non-slum areas. We recruited children from government schools only because our aim was to better understand the interaction of lower socioeconomic status, location, medium of instruction, and school or teaching resources with children’s school, language, and cognitive development. All tasks were behavioural.In total, 741 children from Delhi and 780 children from Hyderabad were tested at two points in the same calendar year, namely when the children were attending Std IV and Std V respectively. A short longitudinal design has been adopted to address the development of language, literacy, numeracy, cognitive functions, critical thinking, and problem solving over two years in children with different amounts of mother tongue literacy in schools in remote rural India and urban slums along with an equal number of children from rural (non-remote) and urban (non-slum). For such purposes, our project employs innovative research methodologies creating new datasets with mixed quantitative and qualitative methods such as the combination of a large range of tasks measuring the relative role of internal factors ( e.g., cognitive, metacognitive abilities of the child) and external factors (e.g., SES, geographic factors, teacher training and qualifications) on learning outcomes. This is the first study to combine such a large range of tasks and will enable an in depth investigation of the role of internal and external factors on learning outcomes in India; the recruitment of a large number of children across three different states, which makes the study representative and the development of several language, literacy, and critical thinking tasks for various languages in India. Sampling will be from a small number of schools in each site so that the school factor is controlled.
Funding information
Grant number
ES/N010345/1
Access
Publisher
UK Data Service
Publication year
2021
Terms of data access
The Data Collection is available for download to users registered with the UK Data Service.
Related publications
Not available