The selfish giant: narration and language instruction in a multicultural pre-primary class as a model for teacher change and development

Cultural Inclusion in Early Childhood and Primary Education

“…Four papers (three in-service and one pre-service) did not report on the background of the teacher. Furthermore, half of the in-service PD interventions (48%) had a universal approach towards diversity, whereas the other interventions targeted specific groups, such as bilingual children or English language learners (e.g., Fokaidou & Hadjitheodoulou-Loizidou, 2014), African-American children (e.g., Jones & Browne, 2015), refugees (e.g., Leeman & Van Koeven, 2019) or Roma families (i.e., Symeou & Karagiorgi, 2018). The percentage of papers that had a universal approach was slightly higher for the pre-service literature (64%).…”

“…In addition, for both in-service and pre-service literature the majority of the interventions was focused at cultural diversity (46%) or both cultural and linguistic diversity (42%). A primary focus on linguistic diversity was less common with only four in-service papers (i.e., Daniel & Pray, 2017;Fokaidou & Hadjitheodoulou-Loizidou, 2014;Van der Wildt, Van Avermaet, & Van Houtte, 2017;Spies et al, 2017) and one pre-service paper (i.e., Polat et al, 2019) specifically targeting this type of diversity. Finally, we coded if interventions were targeting teachers' knowledge, skills, or belief systems, which showed different patterns for in-service and pre-service literature.…”

“…Finally, no differences were visible for interventions that targeted specific groups versus interventions with a more universal approach towards diversity. However, interventions that specifically focused on linguistic diversity were mostly in-service interventions that used communities of practice embedded in the organization (i.e., Fokaidou & Hadjitheodoulou-Loizidou, 2014;Spies et al, 2017;Van der Wildt et al, 2017).…”

“…In the study by Fokaidou and Hadjitheodoulou-Loizidou (2014) the school director was involved and national policies on the use of parallel language instruction for Greek second language learners guided the design of the intervention. In contrast, in the study by Van der Wildt et al (2017) key persons were included not as a result of policy choices, but as a means to change school policies.…”

“…Including key persons and adapting policy seems especially necessary for interventions focusing on linguistic diversity. Whereas Van der Wildt et al (2017) and Fokaidou and Hadjitheodoulou-Loizidou (2014) show how this can positively impact PD effectiveness, some other studies expressed the negative consequences of not including key persons. Teachers in the intervention of Daniel and Pray (2017) expressed great personal growth in knowledge, skills and belief systems regarding English language learners.…”