DigiFam - Digital Media as Language and Literarcy Learning Spaces in Multilingual Families

• Principal investigator: Maria Obojska
• Duration: May 2021-November 2023
• Funding: Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR)

Transnational families offer their members unique safe spaces for language and literacy learning. With the growing availability and accessibility of digital technologies, many of these families draw on digital media in their learning endeavours. Yet, as of today, there is little systematic knowledge on how digital media are used by transnational families to facilitate language and literacy learning. Understanding these practices is of paramount importance as they form an important basis for the development of literacy skills needed to meet the demands of life in modern, linguistically and culturally diverse societies. Focusing on transnational families in Luxembourg, the current project’s objective is to address this knowledge gap through a mixed methods design employing a large scale survey and qualitative case studies.

The project’s overarching research question reads: In what ways and to what extent are digital media used for language and literacy learning in multilingual transnational families in Luxembourg? To help answer this, the research maps out the tools used by different family members for their learning practices, the kinds of language and literacy learning practices the families engage in, as well as the ways the family members  create individual and joint learning spaces for learning.

Through a combination of survey data collected among parents  and qualitative data from five families, the project contributes new knowledge on the role digital media play in language and literacy learning among transnationals in a linguistically and culturally diverse society. It is hoped that this knowledge will serve as the basis for the implementation of relevant digital language and literacy learning tools in both informal and formal educational settings, thus contributing to the digitalisation of education and preparing learners for the dmenads of modern citizenship.