A professional development course in translanguaging: Challenges and opportunities

In 2017, the new law declared multilingual education mandatory in Luxembourg where there are 65% of 4-year-old language minority children. To support teachers we offer a course in translanguaging that builds on children’s full linguistic repertoire. The study aims to foster home-school collaboration and children’s cognitive, linguistic and socio-emotional engagement in the classroom. Mixed methods are used: (1) focus groups, questionnaires, and language portraits with teachers, and (2) test in early literacy and numeracy in school and home language followed by video observations with children. Course challenges are teachers’ language separation assumption and high linguistic diversity in schools. Opportunities are teachers’ understanding that the focus is on children and not on languages. Close collaboration with organisational stakeholders is essential.