Multilingual childhoods of refugee children in Icelandic preschools: educational practices and partnerships with parents

ABSTRACT

Many refugee families face challenges in their new educational environments. This qualitative research study aims to explore the experiences of six Syrian refugee families who arrived in Iceland from Lebanon in 2016 and settled in three municipalities (Stjórnarráð Íslands 2019) and their children in their preschool settings; and to explore the experiences of staff in their preschools. The theoretical framework of the study includes critical approaches to education (May and Sleeter 2010) and multilingual education for social justice (Cummins 2004). The findings indicate that while most of the children are doing well in the preschools according to the teachers and parents, many challenges have appeared, including the illiteracy of some of the parents as well as differences in values, languages and expectations between the schools and the parents.

KEYWORDS:

• Refugee children
• home language
• educational partnerships with parents
• educational practices
• Icelandic preschools

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by University of Iceland Research Fund: [grant number 1470-1472077].