Beyond the language: Immigrant children as strategic learners

This paper uses examples of some Chinese immigrant children’s strategic learning of English language in their early childhood centres to illustrate the committed nature of these children as learners. Through child observations, child interviews and interviews with the children’s teachers and their parents, this research obtained evidence about the children’s strategic engagement with learning of a new language. The adoption of a phenomenological approach in research theorized the children’s intentionality and reflexivity. The children’s experience with the English language became of window into their learning motivation and attitudes. The use of a new language reflects the children’s underlying desires for settlement in a learning setting. The data demonstrate that the children adopted a range of strategies when reconciling their commitment to settle in a learning setting with the opportunities provided to them in that setting. Learning viewed as strategic activity has as its central defining characteristics a process in which immigrant children respond to the possibilities or constraints stemming from their learning environments.