ABSTRACT
This chapter arises from a three-year ethnographic research project comparing children's language and literacy learning in four faith communities in London: Ghanaian Pentecostal, Bangladeshi Muslim, Tamil Hindu and Polish Catholic. It focuses on the first two communities, discussing their efforts to foster children's self-confidence and help them build successful learner identities that transfer to the mainstream setting. The chapter considers how a Sunday school teacher at the Pentecostal church uses the David and Goliath biblical story to encourage children to construct a positive self-image in the faith context and find alternative ways of responding to difficulties in school. It describes the definition of learner identity as 'a positive sense of self that enables students to fully participate in the learning process, drawing on all their cultural and linguistic resources'. The chapter discusses the mind map drawn by nine-year-old Nuha, from one of the Bangladeshi Muslim families.
