Putting Arendt, Bakhtin and atmosphere to work: Exploring different paths concerning the language development of multilingual children

Giæver, Katrine; Jones, Liz

doi:10.1177/1463949120925895

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 25 publications

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“…Likt ett professionellt omdöme bygger språklig hållbarhet på att flera olika kunskapsdimensioner (teoretiska, praktiska, känslomässiga och sinnliga) samspelar med varandra. En sådan flerdimensionell logik innefattar också förmågan att betrakta fenomen som barns tystnad eller nonsensutsagor som mångbottnade och i sitt sammanhang potentiellt begripliga (Giaever & Jones, 2021) snarare än som dilemman relaterade till exempelvis bristande språklig kompetens (Martín-Bylund, 2018b).…”

Section: Omdömesgill Språkundervisning I Förskolanunclassified

TRA_Professional trans-linguistic discernment in early childhood language education:

Martín-Bylund

2024

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How to sensibly educate young children in and through the language(s) they live by? In an era of increasing linguistic variation and change, this burning question keeps emerging in educational practices of the early years and is addressed in this paper, mapping a professional trans-linguistic discernment. Linguistic variation is a long time a fact, rapidly increasing in all parts of the Swedish society, including early years’ education. Yet, monolingual traditions of linguistic preservation are persisting. The Swedish language legislation aims at safeguarding both the Swedish language and Sweden’s linguistic plurality, ambitions reflected in the preschool curriculum. Aspirations to support children’s development of all their languages are internationally acknowledged as progressive, but the language issue as entangled in early childhood practice is multifaceted. The study is inspired by posthumanist applied linguistics and by contemporary philosopher Jonna Bornemark’s discussion of a professional discernment as a compound competence built in interaction with both experiences and theoretical knowledge, but also feelings and the human senses. These bodily dimensions of discernment make the concept particularly interesting to explore in relation to professions working with young children, where the close relationship between lexical language(s) and other bodily expressions is often made particularly prominent and where the teacher body may be considered a both caring and teaching ‘tool’. RQ1. What challenges and queries emerge at the intersection of practicing curricular linguistic assignments and meeting the linguistic and other diversities of concrete educational practices in early childhood? RQ2. What characterizes a professional discernment in relation to such challenges and queries? Data are produced through focus group interviews with early childhood educators and analyzed through a post-qualitative methodological approach. The results indicate that professionals struggle with how to support the development of languages that they do not themselves speak, and that the support of other mother tongues than Swedish sometimes seems to need to be done at the expense of the Swedish language. Additionally, children’s preference of English, not as a mother tongue, but as a "lingua franca" is pointed out as an emerging phenomenon in groups of children who do not share a common language and where Swedish speakers are a minority. Despite the wide use and special position of English in Sweden, it is still considered a foreign language and not specified in the linguistic assignments of the preschool curriculum. Professionals of early childhood language education are urged to think and act situationally and judiciously, in relation to local practices and different layers of linguistic and other needs, rather than to what may previously be defined and demanded at a generalized level. This, what may be labeled a professional trans-linguistic discernment, differs from recent years’ focus in education on standards and accountability, with an emerging instrumental understanding of teachers who implement and ensure routines, i.e., for language teaching in the early years. It is discussed what encouraging a professional, trans-linguistic discernment may practically, theoretically, and politically require. Keywords: professional discernment, translanguaging/translinguistic, linguistic variation/change, posthumanist applied linguistics, post-qualitative methodologies

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Section: Omdömesgill Språkundervisning I Förskolanunclassified

TRA_Professional trans-linguistic discernment in early childhood language education:

Martín-Bylund

2024

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“…Giaever beskriver et skel mellem monologisk paedagogisk praksis med forudbestemte laeringsmål og en dialogisk paedago gisk praksis, hvor børnene er med til at forme dialogerne. Den dialogiske praksis med blik for barnets udtryk, herunder også kropssprog, bidrager omvendt til, at minoritetsbar net bliver set i faellesskabet og potentielt styrket i den sproglige udvikling (Giaever, 2020;Giaever & Jones, 2021). IljeLien (2018IljeLien ( , 2019IljeLien ( , 2020 viser i sin udforskning af interaktioner i norske dagtilbud, at det minoritetssproglige barns perspektiver kan tilgås gennem øget opmaerksomhed på de aestetiske og kropslige udtryk i den sproglige samhandling.…”

Section: Barnets Ret Til Deltagelseunclassified

TRA_Epistemisk marginalisering af flersprogede børn i børnehaven og behovet for translanguaging

Drevsholt,

Jensen

2024

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Children’s communicative capital: Promoting inclusive storying in a diverse preschool community through critical participatory action research

Farndale,

Reichelt

2023

Journal of Early Childhood Literacy

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Advocating for inclusive literacy teaching pedagogies, to support 3–5-year-old children’s multimodal and multilingual storying, is fundamental in diverse nations. In Australia, for example, there are over 26% of 5-year-old children connecting with language backgrounds other than English, 7% are Aboriginal, and over 5% are diagnosed with special needs ( AEDC, 2021 ). Arguably, children draw from their own cultural, linguistic, and neuro diverse ways of expressing; hence, visual, gestural, spatial, auditory, and touch-type modes of expression, deserve greater recognition in literacy. Our critical participatory action research advocates for an expanded view of literacy focusing on children’s assets to communicate stories beyond vocal or written versions of story’telling’ in English, by incorporating translanguaging. We consider ‘storying’ to be a more inclusive term that incorporates multiple and multilingual modes in story creation. Our research on Kaurna country (the Adelaide Plains), involved 66 three to five-year-old culturally, linguistically and neuro diverse preschoolers, and their families. They interacted and translanguaged with 10 educators to explore multilingual, Aboriginal, and autistic children’s storying. The 6-month research project questioned: ‘How do diverse children communicate stories and how can children’s storying be encouraged with culturally responsive community involvement?.’ Observation, interview, questionnaire, artefact and reflective journaling data identified diverse children’s storying capabilities, highlighting touch, embodied expression and movement of props, as children expressed imagined stories. Thematic analysis led to the emergence of the concept, ‘communicative capital,’ a component nestled within Bourdieu’s (1991) ‘cultural capital,’ highlighting multiple modes of expression beyond named languages (as per the concept of ‘linguistic capital’). We argue that children’s communicative funds of knowledge and semiotic systems for meaning-making deserve increased value in inclusive literacy education, curriculum development, teacher education, pedagogy, practice and policy, so to embrace and expand the storying strengths of children with autism, First Nations children, multilingual children, and all children worldwide.

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Putting Arendt, Bakhtin and atmosphere to work: Exploring different paths concerning the language development of multilingual children

Cited by 3 publications

References 25 publications

TRA_Professional trans-linguistic discernment in early childhood language education:

TRA_Professional trans-linguistic discernment in early childhood language education:

TRA_Epistemisk marginalisering af flersprogede børn i børnehaven og behovet for translanguaging

Children’s communicative capital: Promoting inclusive storying in a diverse preschool community through critical participatory action research

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