Practitioners’ language-supporting strategies in multilingual ECE institutions in Luxembourg

Abstract

Multilingual education is mandatory in early childhood education in several European countries. Scholars working in first, second and foreign language learning have shown the effectiveness of interaction-promoting and language-modelling strategies for language development. In addition, teachers in bilingual contexts have been translanguaging to foster language learning. To this day, few research studies have examined these strategies in combination and their deployment in multilingual contexts. The present study takes place in multilingual Luxembourg where 64% of the four-year-olds do not speak Luxembourgish. It focuses on three practitioners who took part in a professional development course on multilingual pedagogies and presents their language-supporting strategies as well as their translanguaging practices. The findings show that the practitioners use a range of strategies in Luxembourgish, French and home languages, in daily conversations, routines and language and literacy activities to address children’s linguistic needs.