Translanguaging practices in early childhood education in Luxembourg

Calls for multilingual pedagogies have reached early childhood education and some programmes have been implemented in Europe. However, their focus frequently remains on the majority language and home languages are given little space. For multilingual programmes to be inclusive and empowering, professionals need to break with monolingual practices based on monolingual ideologies. The resource-oriented pedagogy of translanguaging which challenges hegemonic practices, is one way in which professionals can give space to all languages, leverage children’s resources and contribute to their development.
The present chapter presents the findings of a professional development on multilingual pedagogies in Luxembourg. Data stem from observations, video-recorded activities and interviews with four practitioners, two working in a formal education setting and two in a non-formal one. The findings show that the practitioners developed a positive stance towards translanguaging and multilingual education, learned to design a child-centred and holistic multilingual learning environment and used languages flexibly, deploying translation, code-switching and translanguaging. This dynamic language use facilitated communication, participation, language learning and well-being. There were differences between the practitioners’ flexible language use. The professionals in the school did not use pair talk, made less use of code-switching and used languages more strategically and responsibly than the caregivers in the crèche.