Two languages in the air: a cross-cultural comparison of preschool teachers’ reflections on their flexible bilingual practices

Abstract

M. (2018). Two languages in the air : a cross-cultural comparison of preschool teachers' reflections on their flexible bilingual practices. In M. Schwartz, & Å. Palviainen (Eds.), 21st Century Pre-school Bilingual Education. Routledge.

The Interaction Between Family Language Policy and Educators in Early Language Education

“…In particular, the project investigated bilingual practices of Swedish-Finnish bilingual children in Swedish-medium preschools through interviews with 18 parents, 10 preschool staff, and 9 children, observations in the family settings and preschools for 6 months, and a document analysis of mass media and policy documents and curricula. The project revealed important findings including a shift to flexible bilingual practices in the classroom by taking each child's needs and interests into account (Palviainen et al 2016), the importance of establishing partnerships beginning from the early childhood years to promote bilingualism at home and in the society (Bergroth and Palviainen 2016), and the active agency of preschoolers in constructing the language policies at home and at school (Bergroth and Palviainen 2017). Overall, the findings expanded our understanding of FLP, and the partnership between families and educators.…”

Early Language Education in Luxembourg

“…From February 2017, thus, 9 months into the PD, the three practitioners begun to use translanguaging more strategically. They spoke some French, Spanish, and Portuguese to French-speaking, Spanish-speaking, and Portuguese-speaking children when they judged that this switch promoted learning (Mård-Miettinen et al 2018;Mifsud and Vella 2018;Palviainen et al 2016). Translanguaging enabled the teachers to increase the quantity of input and improve the quality of the adult-child interactions.…”

“…In all settings, the teachers and caregivers translanguaged and translated to gain and sustain attention, facilitate communication, ensure comprehension, or make children feel secure (Mård-Miettinen et al 2018;Mifsud and Vella 2018). Yet, the practitioners in the formal settings monitored their language use more carefully than those in the non-formal sector, and their translanguaging resembled the "responsible code-switching" described by García (2009) and Palviainen et al (2016). By contrast, the practitioners in the non-formal educational institutions in Luxembourg switched to the child's home languages without always considering the need for such a switch.…”

Dynamics in Interaction in Bilingual Team Teaching: Examples from a Finnish Preschool Classroom

“…The data included three 60-minute interviews with her as well as two half-day video-recorded observations of her interaction with the children. The interviews, which have been reported in more detail in Palviainen and Mård-Miettinen (2015) and Palviainen et al (2016), were of a stimulated recall type: the bilingual teacher watched the video-recordings of her interaction with the children in small group activities that she had led and commented on and explained her own bilingual language practices. The principles she described herself as following and the practices she applied are explained further in the following section (4.2).…”

“…Previous analyses of her bilingual practices when leading small group activities have shown that she followed certain principles in her use of the two languages: a) she flexibly and continuously alternated between the two languages, b) she used the two languages to equal amounts across activities, c) she adhered to responsible codeswitching, avoiding direct translation between the two languages and using the two languages for different purposes, d) she used rich scaffolding structures (body language, contextualisation, verbalisation of actions, repetition of words and routines, etc. ), and e) she adjusted her bilingual speech to the needs of individual children (for more details see Palviainen et al 2016). She also emphasised the importance of acting as a role model of a bilingual speaker.…”