Developing multilingual practices in early childhood education through professional development in Luxembourg

Abstract

This paper investigates seven early education practitioners' attitudes towards multilingual activities and translanguaging as well as their actual practices in Luxembourg. They took part in a professional development comprising a course, coaching, and regular meetings to deepen their understanding of multilingualism and language learning, and enable them to implement activities in multiple languages. The findings, drawn from questionnaires, observations, and interviews, show that all practitioners opened up towards multilingual activities and translanguaging, increased activities in such languages, and translanguaged frequently. The practitioners analyzed their beliefs and practices, connected theory and practice, constructed new knowledge, developed positive attitudes and changed their practice. This study is the first one to investigate the attitudes and practices of professionals in formal and non-formal education settings as well as the effect of professional development in Luxembourg. It also addresses the research gap regarding professional development on multilingualism in early childhood.

Inclination of Students towards Active Participation in Extracurricular Activities as an Effective Tool for Professional Development during Education in Pakistan

“…PD is a collaborative approach for better results by the employees of any organization and the opportunities linked with that organization. Mentoring, technical support, consultation, counselling, guidance and supervision and learning lessons are some of many ways of approaching PD (Kirsch, Aleksić, Mortini, & Andersen, 2020).…”

Early Language Education in Luxembourg

“…In each of these models, the practitioners take on more or less active roles. PD is more likely to lead to sustainable change if the approach is collaborative, inquiry-based, and performance-based and encourages reflection (Kirsch and Aleksić 2018;Kirsch et al 2020;Peeters et al 2014).…”

“…The topics covered included perspectives on multilingualism, theories of language learning, pedagogical principles, literacy activities around books, songs and rhymes, as well as language-supportive strategies. Furthermore, the practitioners and the researchers discussed activities which they had video-recorded in the institutions (Kirsch et al 2020).…”

“…Furthermore, they had begun to question their focus on Luxembourgish and open up toward multilingual education. Finally, both their interest in activities in languages other than Luxembourgish and the number of actual activities in other languages increased over the course of the PD (Kirsch and Aleksić 2018;Kirsch et al 2020). Nevertheless, such activities remained rare.…”

“…The interviews and the observations of the seven professionals, who were followed over a whole academic year, provided evidence of change in their daily practices. The practitioners moved away from a practiced monolingual policy and implement multilingual activities (Kirsch and Aleksić 2018;Kirsch et al 2020). While all seven professionals suggested activities in Luxembourgish, German, French, and the children's home languages, only five designed a child-centered and holistic language learning environment where children encountered multiple languages both in daily interactions and in guided activities such as dialogic reading, story retellings, games, songs, and rhymes.…”