The Effect of Professional Development on Multilingual Education in Early Childhood in Luxembourg

Abstract

While multilingual programmes have been implemented in early childhood education in several countries, professionals have shown to be unsure of how to deal with language diversity and promote home languages. Therefore, there is a need for professional development. The present article discusses the outcomes of a professional course on multilingual education in early childhood delivered to 46 early-years practitioners in Luxembourg. Using a questionnaire administered prior to and after the course as well as interviews, we examined the influence of the training on attitudes to multilingual education and activities to develop Luxembourgish and home languages. The analysis drew on content analysis, paired samples t-test and correlational analysis. The findings show that the course positively influenced the professionals" knowledge about multilingualism and language learning, their attitudes towards home languages, their interest in organising activities in the children"s home languages and the implementation of these activities. The results shed light on special interest areas such as the quality of input that future professional development courses could focus on.

Translanguaging in Early Childhood Education in Luxembourg: From Practice to Pedagogy

“…The present case study is part of the longitudinal research project MuLiPEC which examines the influence of a professional development course about multilingual pedagogies on the practitioners' knowledge, beliefs and practices (see Kirsch and Aleksić 2018). In this chapter, we focus on the practitioners of one formal and one non-formal education setting, who work with three-year-olds.…”

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).…”

“…However, PD can only influence attitudes, knowledge, and skills to some extent, and the influence on practices may even be less important as there is no direct relationship between beliefs and practices (Pajares 1992). For instance, the belief that multilingualism is an asset and that the use of home languages in the classroom promotes the learning of the majority language does not result in professionals implementing multilingual approaches in education (Alisaari et al 2019;Kirsch and Aleksić 2018;Kratzmann et al 2017).…”

“…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.…”