Opening minds to translanguaging pedagogies

[en] Translanguaging pedagogies promise to capitalise on students’ language backgrounds, improve their academic achievements and address social inequalities. While research studies in monolingual, bilingual and multilingual contexts testify to the benefits of translanguaging for learning, well-being and identity-building, few studies focus on early childhood education and the use of more than two languages. Furthermore, little is known about the implementation of translanguaging pedagogies and the challenges faced by professionals. This article is based on a longitudinal research project which offered a professional development course to develop multilingual pedagogies in early childhood education in Luxembourg, where 63.7% of the 4-year-olds do not speak Luxembourgish as their home language. The article presents challenges which three practitioners faced when implementing a translanguaging pedagogy in their preschool classes as well as the ways in which they overcame them. They changed their negative stance to multilingual education, developed a social-constructivist leaning environment and monitored their language use. The findings shed light on the complexities of the implementation process and the support needed for professional learning.

Disciplines :

Education & instruction

Author, co-author :

KIRSCH, Claudine ; University of Luxembourg > Faculty of Language and Literature, Humanities, Arts and Education (FLSHASE) > Education, Culture, Cognition and Society (ECCS)

External co-authors :

Language :

English

Title :

Opening minds to translanguaging pedagogies

Publication date :

30 April 2020

Journal title :

System

ISSN :

0346-251X

eISSN :

1879-3282

Publisher :

Elsevier

Special issue title :

Pedagogical translanguaging: navigating between languages at school and university

Volume :

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

Focus Area :

Educational Sciences

FnR Project :

FNR9989225 - Developing Multilingual Pedagogies In Early Childhood Education, 2015 (01/05/2016-30/04/2019) - Claudine Kirsch

Funders :

FNR - Fonds National de la Recherche [LU]
MENJE

Available on ORBilu :

since 01 May 2020

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