First steps into developing multilingual practices in ECEC in Luxembourg: Insights from the projects MuLiPEC and COMPARE

Translanguaging pedagogies promise to take account of students’ language and socio-cultural backgrounds and contribute to their academic achievements (García, Johnson, and Seltzer, 2017). Researchers who have investigated translanguaging practices in monolingual, bilingual and multilingual contexts, have shown that translanguaging promotes learning, well-being, and identity-building (Lewis, Jones, and Baker, 2012; García & Sylvan, 2011; Young & Mary, 2016; Vaish 2019a). Studies in early childhood education and care (ECEC) remain scarce, particularly those that focus on the use of insti... Mehr ...

Verfasser: Kirsch, Claudine
Dokumenttyp: conference paper not in proceedings
Erscheinungsdatum: 2021
Schlagwörter: professional development / ECEC / formal and non-formal education / Life sciences / Sciences du vivant
Sprache: Englisch
Permalink: https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-27522218
Datenquelle: BASE; Originalkatalog
Powered By: BASE
Link(s) : https://orbilu.uni.lu/handle/10993/49306

Translanguaging pedagogies promise to take account of students’ language and socio-cultural backgrounds and contribute to their academic achievements (García, Johnson, and Seltzer, 2017). Researchers who have investigated translanguaging practices in monolingual, bilingual and multilingual contexts, have shown that translanguaging promotes learning, well-being, and identity-building (Lewis, Jones, and Baker, 2012; García & Sylvan, 2011; Young & Mary, 2016; Vaish 2019a). Studies in early childhood education and care (ECEC) remain scarce, particularly those that focus on the use of institutional languages and home languages. Furthermore, little is known about the implementation of translanguaging pedagogies and the challenges faced by professionals. One exception comes from Vaish (2019 a, b) who investigated the practices of primary teachers in Singapore who taught in English, Chinese and Malay. She identified three main challenges: superdiversity, negative attitudes towards home language, and teacher-centred pedagogies. Studies on professional development (PD) in ECEC have shown that PD can help practitioners change beliefs, knowledge and practices to some extent (Egert et al. 2018). This presentation comes from multilingual Luxembourg, where 63.7% of the 4-year-olds do not speak Luxembourgish as their home language. Since 2017, educators in ECEC are required to develop children’s skills in Luxembourgish, familiarise them with French and value their home languages. Professional development courses help practitioners move away from monolingual policies and practices that existed prior to 2017, and implement multilingual pedagogies. This paper examines the challenges teachers and educators faced during this process. It is based on seven group interviews carried out during two research projects; the first aimed to develop multilingual pedagogies (MuLiPEC), the second collaboration with parents and multiliteracies (COMPARE). The findings, based on thematic analysis, indicate, firstly, that the educators faced ...