Collaboration between home and crèches: perspectives, experiences and expectations of educators in Luxembourg

Multiliteracies in early childhood education are promoted by researchers in multilingual education (García et al., 2017) and the European Commission. One way in which educators in crèches can develop literacies in multiple languages is through collaboration with parents. Collaboration has been shown to positively influence educators, parents, and children. Educators, for instance, become aware of children’s funds of knowledge and draw on the learners’ resources and make their teaching more linguistically and culturally inclusive (Wells Rowe & Miller, 2016). While collaboration can be highly effective, the establishment of partnerships is difficult. Successful partnerships depend on several factors, among them the professionals’ beliefs, experiences, expectations, as well as space and time (Lengyel & Salem, 2016; Reynolds et al., 2017).
Collaboration has been a focus of attention in Luxembourg since the introduction of multilingual education in formal and non-formal early childhood institutions. Since 2017 teachers in schools and educators in crèches are required to develop children’s skills in Luxembourgish, familiarise them with French, and value their home languages. Partnerships with parents is one pillar of this programme. A previous study has shown that educators are beginning to develop such partnerships (Kirsch 2019). The longitudinal project Collaboration with parents and Multiliteracy in early Childhood Education (COMPARE) uses a mixed-method approach to examine the multiliteracy practices as well as partnership building between parents and educators in crèches in Luxembourg.
In this paper we present the perspectives of educators on partnership building and multiliteracy. The data stem from two online questionnaires completed by educators in 2020. We examine the practitioners’ perspectives on collaboration (Betz et al. 2017), modes and types of partnerships (e.g. Thiersch, 2006), types and frequency of collaborative activities in multiple languages (e.g. Hachfeld et al., 2016), and factors influencing collaboration (e.g. Reynolds et al., 2017). The data show that the declared practices are multilingual and that parents come to the crèche to do literacy activities in languages other than the main one(s) of the crèches. However, new language hierarchies are being developed. The findings demonstrate that educators and parents are actors in shaping new policies while also pointing to some arising inequalities.