The present study aimed to adapt the Teacher Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES) developed by Schwarzer et al. (1999) into Italian and to test its validity and reliability. In a group of teachers (N = 683; 83% female), the factor structure (Confirmatory Factor Analyses), construct validity (latent relations with burnout variables), measurement invariance…

The aim of the Regional Dossier series is to provide concise descriptions of minority languages in education, mainly in Europe but also in other parts of the world. In the Slovene Littoral, Slovene and Italian are official languages and thus they share equal status in public and private life. Learners in this region attend schools either with…

Linguistic minority spaces tend to have a long history of language-ideological struggles that are often fought on the terrain of education, which is further complexified in the light of more recent migration. The northernmost Italian province of South Tyrol is such a space, in which German-language preschools are increasingly attended by children…

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…

The aim of the Regional Dossier series is to provide concise descriptions of regional or minority languages in education, mainly in Europe but also in other parts of the world. Friulian is a Romance language, traditionally recognised as part of the Rhaeto-Romance sub-family. It is spoken in Friûl (in Friulian)/Friuli (in Italian), a territory…

Toddlers from low-income and language-minority immigrant families are at risk for language difficulties due to early disparities in the quality of their home language environment. The present longitudinal study extends previous research by investigating nursery teachers' communicative modalities and functions, and their relations with the…

In Italy, more than 700,000 asylum seekers and migrants arrived in the country between 2014-2020. Newly arrived children including refugees and migrants need to quickly acquire Italian skills to succeed in school and society. To help address this urgent need, the Akelius digital learning application was introduced in Bologna and Rome for Italian…

Purpose: Attempts to cultivate a multilingual mindset in education in South Tyrol find an obstacle in educational norms, structures and policies that divide students into linguistically distinct schools based on their self-identified main language. Education in the region is administered through three separate educational authorities --…

This regional dossier aims to provide a concise description of the European minority language, Italian in Switzerland, in education. Aspects that are addressed include features of the education system, recent educational policies, main actors, legal arrangements and support structures, as well as quantitative aspects such as the number of schools,…

There is a call for multilingual pedagogies including the use of literacy in several languages in early childhood education. However, many practitioners find it difficult to challenge the dominant language ideologies and are unsure of how to develop literacy practices in multiple languages. This paper is based in Luxembourg where a multilingual…

Language teacher education is widely identified as one of the most important areas that needs addressing in order to improve early language instruction, yet research into teacher education for early language teachers remains relatively sparse. This volume responds to this gap by compiling studies with diverse methodological tenets from a wide…

While the population of bilinguals and English learners continues to rise in our schools, teachers often feel frustrated with their lack of knowledge about best practices to support their multilingual students' language, socio-emotional and cognitive development. Teachers' frustration is compounded by the push for assessments in the…

Kindergarten in Victoria, Australia is the preschool year, attended by children who are four going on five, and who will go onto primary school the following year. These are part-time programs, run over a small number of sessions per week, typically for 3-5 hours per session for 10-12 hours per week. North West Brunswick Kindergarten, in the…

This volume offers a comprehensive, up-to-date, empirical and methodological view over the new scenarios and environments for language teaching and learning recently emerged (e.g. blended learning, e-learning, ubiquitous learning, social learning, autonomous learning or lifelong learning), and also over some of the new approaches to language…

Three experiments investigated whether linguistic and/or attentional constraints might account for preschoolers' difficulties when learning color terms. Task structure and demands were equated across experiments, and both speed and degree of learning were compared. In Experiment 1, 3-year-olds who were matched on vocabulary score were taught new…