Minority Language Transmission in Early Childhood

Official language policies in Sweden were assumed to facilitate the transmission of minority language to the next generation. Parents with main languages other than Swedish were investigated in three successive surveys in order to map parental intentions during pregnancy and compare them with parental language use when their children are two and a half and four years old, respectively. Generally, parents tend to continue to speak minority languages, although there are differences between groups. In the last survey, language transmission is measured, defined as the child's active use of a minority language in communication with a parent. Given that the mother uses the minority language exclusively, home language support in child day care can promote minority language transmission. There is, however, an ever increasing gap between official language policy and realities as regards home language support.     

Electronic reading and digital library technologies: understanding learner expectation and usage intent for mobile learning

Mobile information technology is changing the education landscape by offering learners the opportunity to engage in asynchronous, ubiquitous instruction. While there is a proliferation of mobile content management systems being developed for the mobile Web and stand-alone mobile applications, few studies have addressed learner expectations and usage intent in consuming digital documents from online content providers and digital libraries with specific emphasis on formal instruction. Understanding usage intent and actual usage of a mobile learning agent as a result of ease of use and usefulness of mobile devices will be addressed in this study. A research framework for instructional technology usage is proposed to help better articulate critical success factors in implementing formal learning using a mobile device, specifically an electronic reader or a tablet computer.