Profiles of learning opportunities of multilingual and monolingual children in kindergarten

Abstract

Early childhood education serves an increasing number of multilingual children, and teachers are challenged to create high-quality learning opportunities in the classroom for all children. The child’s engagement and interactions with the teacher are important in this respect. The present study therefore examined how multilingualism relates to engagement and teacher-child interactions, taking a person-oriented approach. During one school year, 76 kindergarteners (43 multilingual) from 19 classrooms were observed for behavioral engagement and individual teacher-child interactions. Five engagement profiles were identified that reflect different levels of engagement across classroom settings. Multilingual children were overrepresented in profiles that showed lower engagement in one or more settings. Also, five interaction profiles were identified that showed strong diversity in the interactions of teachers with children in their classroom. Monolingual and multilingual children were equally represented across these profiles. Children in the more beneficial interaction profiles were also often in the moderate-to-high engagement profiles.