Educators, parents and children engaging in literacy activities in multiple languages: an exploratory study

ABSTRACT

There is a consensus that home languages are the foundation on which to develop additional languages and that collaboration between homes and institutions of early childhood education and care (ECEC) can contribute to the development of children’s language and literacy skills. Nevertheless, educators seem rarely to draw on multiple languages in literacy activities. Furthermore, situations where educators and parents jointly read to children are scarce. Luxembourg, which has implemented a programme of multilingual education in ECEC, is an ideal context to investigate literacy practices and language use of educators and parents. Drawing on observations in two multilingual centres in Luxembourg as well as interviews, the present study examines the interactions between the educators and the 3-year-old children and those between the educators, parents, and children when the parents occasionally read books in the centres. The findings show that the educators in both centres used several languages and that the types of interactions differed. When the parents offered literacy activities, their use of languages and the roles they played also differed, varying from being fully involved to taking a marginal role. The findings can help educators and policymakers develop inclusive and participatory literacy practices which actively involve children and parents.

KEYWORDS:

• Luxembourg
• multilingualism
• early childhood education
• parent–educator collaboration
• literacy

Acknowledgements

This article would not have been possible without Dr Džoen Bebić-Crestany, Valérie Kemp and Laura Colucci, who collected the data. We would like to thank Prof. Julie Panagiotopoulou as well as Dr. Gabrijela Aleksić for reviewing the first draft and Antony Warde-Jones for proof-reading.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1 Translanguaging is the strategic deployment of a person’s entire semiotic repertoire to communicate and make meaning (García & Otheguy, 2020).

2 This index regroups five values, including the average salary of the residents and the level of unemployment. The index of the two municipalities ranged from 0.30 to 0.51, with values close to 0 indicating a comfortable environment.

3 We have changed two home languages to protect the anonymity of the parents and centres.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund [grant number C19/SC/13552634], the Ministry of Education, Childhood and Youth and the National Youth Service under the name [COMPARE]. The research project has been approved by the Ethics Review Panel of the University of Luxembourg under the reference ERP 19-050.