"Translanguaging in ECE, a project designed to create safe environments where children can feel proud of their identity, express their ideas in multilingual and multimodal ways while making meaning of their world.”
Relevance in the field of Early Childhood Education
The reality of a globalized, interconnected world, characterized by the mobility of people, goods, and knowledge across physical and virtual spaces and time, has had a significant impact on children's early experiences of language, literacy, and identity. Children are learning to function in diverse language contact situations from birth or from a very young age (Ibrahim, 2016). Day by day, the number of multilingual families in early childhood keeps increasing, bringing multilingual children to the classrooms (Kirsch & Seele, 2020; Sanders-Smith & Dávila, 2019). Therefore, it is time to make a change, embracing diversity in order to consider ways in which we could better support young children in the process of developing their own identity.
But, why translanguaging?
According to Coelho & Ortega (2020), pluralistic approaches, such as translanguaging, "encourage students to engage with and utilize their full linguistic repertoire, transfer linguistic knowledge and competencies from one language and culture to others, and bring their voices to the classroom" (p. 155). By promoting translanguaging in our institutions we will create spaces where children feel safe to share their true identities while using their whole repertoire to make meaning of their world (Otheguy et al., 2015).
A young emergent multilingual repertoire is formed from experiences in the home language(s) and the language(s) used in the early childhood classroom, their background knowledge represents their cultural capital. Therefore, we should avoid reinforcing a mismatch between the knowledge gained at home and the one at school (Morell & Lopez, 2021). By fostering congruence among parents and institutions children will be supported by a solid network of contention that will help them thrive in their lives.
A translanguaging approach could bring several benefits to students, such as:
The future of our children is in our hands, therefore as educators, we have the responsibility to implement the practices that better support our students while growing, learning, and widening their understanding of the world.
For a more detailed explanation of the relevance of translanguaging in the early childhood field, you can watch the following video that I created several months ago:
References:
Coelho D. & Ortega Y. (2020) Pluralistic Approaches in Early Language Education: Shifting Paradigms in Language Didactics. In Lau S., Van Viegen S. (Eds) Plurilingual Pedagogies. Educational Linguistics, vol 42. Springer, Cham.
Otheguy, R., García, O., & Reid, W. (2015). Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review, 6(3), 281–307.
Morell, Z. & Lopez, D. (2021) Translanguaging and Emergent Literacy in Early Childhood Education. In O. Garcia (Ed.) Translanguaging and transformative teaching for emergent bilingual students: lessons from the CUNY-NYSIEB Project, pp. 149-150. Routledge
Golubeva, I., & Csillik, E. (2019). Translanguaging Practices in a Hungarian-English Early Childhood Classroom. In C. A. Huertas-Abril & M.E Gomez-Parra (Eds.) Early Childhood Education from an Intercultural and Bilingual Perspective. (pp. 96-116). IGI Global
Kirsch C., & Seele C. (2020) Translanguaging in Early Childhood Education in Luxembourg: From Practice to Pedagogy. In Panagiotopoulou J., Rosen L., Strzykala J. (Eds.) Inclusion, Education and Translanguaging. Inklusion und Bildung in Migrationsgesellschaften. (pp. 63-81) Springer VS, Wiesbaden.
Li, W. (2018) Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics, 39(1), 9–30.
Lindquist, H., & Garmann, N. G. (2019). Toddlers and their translingual practicing homes. International Journal of Multilingualism, 1-14, 1–14.
Otheguy, R., García, O., & Reid, W. (2015). Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review, 6(3), 281–307.
Sanders-Smith, S. C., & Dávila Liv T. (2019). Progressive practice and translanguaging: supporting multilingualism in a Hong Kong preschool. Bilingual Research Journal, 42(3), 275–290.
(Based on Golubeva & Csillik 2019; Kirsch & Seele, 2020; Li, 2018; Lindquist, & Garmann, 2019; Otheguy et al., 2015; Sanders-Smith & Dávila, 2019)