Multilingual education in early years in Luxembourg: a paradigm shift?

ABSTRACT

There is a call for multilingual pedagogies including the use of literacy in several languages in early childhood education. However, many practitioners find it difficult to challenge the dominant language ideologies and are unsure of how to develop literacy practices in multiple languages. This paper is based in Luxembourg where a multilingual programme has been implemented in early childhood education in 2017. The research project examines the language used in daily communication and literacy activities of educators and parents in day-care centres, as reported by educators in two online-questionnaires. The findings show that the educators and parents use multiple languages when communicating, singing and reading with children in the centres. In addition to French and Luxembourgish which dominate, they use five other languages. Their reported multilingual practice reflects their beliefs that speaking and reading in several languages promotes language learning. However, while the programme is multilingual, a range of home languages are marginalised. The educators produce a language hierarchy in the centres in which the parents reproduce. While collaboration with parents can be effective in bringing home languages into day-care centres, educators need to be aware of language hierarchies and ideologies.

KEYWORDS:

• Multilingualism
• Luxembourg
• early childhood education
• non-formal education
• literacy
• parent–school collaboration

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Laura Colucci for her support as well as Dorit Lengyel, Sascha Neumann and Christine Hélot for commenting on an earlier draft. The research project has been approved by the Ethics Review Panel of the University of Luxembourg under the reference ERP 19-050.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Research Fund under grant [C19/SC/13552634], The National Ministry of Education, Childhood and Youth and the National Youth Service under the name [COMPARE].