Translanguaging pedagogy and creative activism for preschool teachers, parents, and children

There are 64 % of four-year old children who not speak Luxembourgish at home (MENJE, 2018). The government proclaimed multilingual early education mandatory in 2017, obliging teachers to develop children’s Luxembourgish, familiarizing them with French, and valuing their home languages. Thus, the present project was threefold: (1) to offer an 18-hours professional development (PD) course in translanguaging pedagogy to 40 teachers over 6 months, (2) to strengthen home-school collaboration, and (3) to support children’s linguistic, socio-emotional, and cognitive development and engagement in the classroom. The results from teacher questionnaires, focus groups, and interviews, showed that there was some positive change regarding the attitudes towards children’s home languages. The interviews with 17 parents indicated that there was a need for more home-school collaboration. The tests in early literacy and numeracy with 23 preschool children over one year, identified that children performed higher in their home languages. The video observations showed that every time the teacher used children’s languages in the classroom, this impacted positively their well-being. Following the principles of creative activism, the author produced three outcomes: (1) the website with over 100 practical activities on how teachers can involve children’s languages and families, (2) the illustrated book Sumak for parents, showing difficulties with integration in a new country, and (3) the illustrated book, Mara’s song for preschool children, showing how Mara, a girl who is laughed at because of her language and culture, finds her way through singing a song inspired by a bird.