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Multilingual education in an Italian public preschool: teachers and families among mobility processes and inclusive practices

  • Valentina Carbonara ORCID logo EMAIL logo
Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 29. November 2021
Multilingua
Aus der Zeitschrift Multilingua Band 41 Heft 3

Abstract

This paper focuses on the integration of translanguaging practices in a public preschool situated in a small village in North-West of Italy. Mobility processes and local Italian families’ school choices have led to the raise of the number of students with an immigrant background enrolled at the studied preschool up to 85%. After a brief overview regarding mobility and translanguaging in education, particularly in relation to preschool domain, I describe the macro and micro contexts of this ethnographic case study. I then focus on the analysis of the main learning activities designed by teachers to engage children’s multilingual repertoires. Later, applying qualitative content analysis, I outline the main patterns and categories emerging from interviews and focus groups conducted with teachers and parents to investigate how they experienced the marginalization of immigrant minority children in their preschool and how they received the introduction of multilingual education approach. The results shows that the adoption of a translanguaging lens contributed to the educational legitimation of language diversity and to the acknowledgment of immigrant families. Finally, I discuss the results in terms of democratic language education and social justice, underlining their implications and relevance for preschools teachers’ professional development and agency.

Keywords: early childhood education; immigrant minority children; mobility; multilingual education; translanguaging
Corresponding author: Valentina Carbonara, Università per Stranieri di Siena, Siena, Italy, E-mail:

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Received: 2021-10-13
Accepted: 2021-11-05
Published Online: 2021-11-29
Published in Print: 2022-05-25

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Introduction to the special issue on translanguaging in the age of mobility
  4. Articles
  5. Translanguaging as a resource for meaning-making at multilingual construction sites
  6. Chronotopic translanguaging and the mobile languaging subject: insights from an Algerian academic sojourner in the UK
  7. Translanguaging pathways to higher education: a transition program for highly educated refugees
  8. Multilingual education in an Italian public preschool: teachers and families among mobility processes and inclusive practices
  9. Language norms in L2 education for adult migrants – translanguaging pedagogy in the age of mobility
  10. Ideological and implementational spaces for translanguaging in the language introduction programme in Swedish Upper Secondary School
  11. Commentary: the complex nexus between (im)mobility and translanguaging
https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2021-0124
Schlagwörter für diesen Artikel
early childhood education; immigrant minority children; mobility; multilingual education; translanguaging

Artikel in diesem Heft

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Introduction to the special issue on translanguaging in the age of mobility
  4. Articles
  5. Translanguaging as a resource for meaning-making at multilingual construction sites
  6. Chronotopic translanguaging and the mobile languaging subject: insights from an Algerian academic sojourner in the UK
  7. Translanguaging pathways to higher education: a transition program for highly educated refugees
  8. Multilingual education in an Italian public preschool: teachers and families among mobility processes and inclusive practices
  9. Language norms in L2 education for adult migrants – translanguaging pedagogy in the age of mobility
  10. Ideological and implementational spaces for translanguaging in the language introduction programme in Swedish Upper Secondary School
  11. Commentary: the complex nexus between (im)mobility and translanguaging
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