Background: Language discussions have historically focused on the power dynamics between dominant and indigenous languages. This has generated discontent and contention on which language should rule the educational sector. The national language policy of South Africa mandates the use of all languages in the educational system. Even though there…

Programs of multilingual education in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) are promising because they contribute to the development of young children's language and literacy as well as their multilingual identities. In practice, many educators are unsure of how to engage children in multilingual literacy activities and policy often falls…

Most policies and teaching practices in early childhood education and care (ECEC) are based on the developmental paths of children from mainstream middle-class, White, European, heterosexual households. The common discourse often summed up as universalism significantly minoritizes children deviating from this "norm" and pathologizes…

Research from dual and bilingual education programs shows that the use of a student's home language for reading instruction is one of the most beneficial practices for multilingual learners. Given the plethora of home languages encountered in public schools, how can teachers who do not speak the languages of their students utilize a student's home…

Drawing from a 3-year ethnographic project in one elementary school in the United States, this article examines how a group of 43 first graders perceived and constructed Brazil and the U.S. during a drawing and writing activity in their bilingual (Portuguese-English) classroom. The majority of the participating children (81.4%) either migrated…

The "Filière Bilingue" (FiBi) is a Swiss public two-way immersion program integrating French-speaking, German-speaking and allophone learners (having neither French nor German as an L1) in each class. Located in the bilingual city of Biel/ Bienne, the "diglossic" situation represented by the use of Swiss German and standard…

This qualitative study examined the perspectives and experiences of seven focal families from Mexican immigrant backgrounds that participated in collaborative project-based learning in their children's bilingual classroom. Projects centered on children's experiential knowledge, and were created bilingually. Findings indicate that parents perceived…

Purpose: This study investigated the extent to which comprehension monitoring in children's first and second language predicts reading comprehension. Method: Children's ability to detect inconsistencies in orally presented stories was measured by response to a judgment question about whether the story made sense and by the identification of the…

This mini-ethnographic case study examined the enactment of the mother tongue (MT) medium of instruction policy in teaching information and communication technology (ICT) to preschoolers or early childhood development (ECD) learners in a Zimbabwean school. The study employed an eclectic cognitive sense-making, ethnography of language policy and…

This paper highlights the complex relations between public and private spaces with regard to young children's bilingual learning, and the importance of developing a pedagogy that allows for the interaction of learning across the two spaces. It uses findings from a qualitative study to illustrate nuanced (mis)alignments between dominant language…

This paper analyses the motivations behind the implementation of bilingual education in the Dutch preschool system and relates this to the status of Dutch in the Dutch educational system. Based on the analysis of policy documents and questionnaires filled in by parents and teachers, this study reveals two different underlying ideologies that the…

This article critically examines bilingual, intercultural education policies and practices in the context of the implementation of these policies in early childhood education. Specifically, it seeks to provide ethnographic background on the incorporation of Indigenous communities into preschools, through the participation of the Indigenous Culture…

Starting bilingual education from birth and early childhood allows the child to be introduced to the advantages of bilingualism at an early age. This study was conducted to explore the perspectives of early childhood teachers working in private preschools that offer education in a foreign language and monolingual teachers working in public…

Van Lier's [2004. "The Ecology and Semiotics of Language Learning: A Sociocultural Perspective." Boston: Kluwer Academy] concept of ecology of language learning is applicable to our focus on children's active engagement in bilingual preschool classroom activities, which are conducive to language learning. The aim of this study was to…

Maltese is a Semitic language closely related to Arabic in structure and morphology but is written from left to right and in the Latin script. When Malta became an independent state within the Commonwealth in 1964, the new Constitution highlighted the importance of Maltese by giving it both a national and an official status. Since 2002, Maltese…