Abstract This paper foregrounds the experiences of multilingual families in Australian schooling and their capacity to contribute significantly to their children’s education through a research-informed home language intervention. For many migrant parents, especially those on temporary skilled employment visas, concerns about English and the unfamiliar school curriculum can lead to a sense of being ill-equipped to assist their children and leaving schooling to the teachers as experts. For Education Departments and schools, however, parental involvement is seen as a sign of connection and interest. These misalignments can position migrant families as disinterested or lacking capacity to engage in their children’s schooling. However, such deficit framings are misrepresentative as migrant parents care deeply about their children’s education. This paper reports on a design-based research intervention at a rural secondary school with growing EAL/D student enrolments. Informed by understandings of the social and cognitive links between home (or first) and second language development, and multilingualism as the foundation for knowledge building and cultural sharing, a sustained program of guided home language use was instigated by researchers with the school leadership, teachers, Brazilian families and their children. The outcomes included greater social connections, increased home language proficiency, and improved student school engagement. The project provides exemplars, for schools, often entrenched in monolingual approaches to curriculum delivery, to shift their presuppositions about multilingual families’ capacity to contribute to their children’s schooling and from that position, build rich connections for participation and learning.
Kettle et al. (Wed,) studied this question.