Multilingualism and second language learning in early childhood

Course UPDATE - Explanations and Reflections

Experiences from the TWBD project has shown us that many teachers feel overwhelmed with the challenges concerning the diversity in the schools. The teachers have limited time, many goals to meet and reports to write. Cultural differences and children having to learn the language of instruction represent challenges that seem to come in on top of the already demanding job of teaching young students important subjects and matters.

For children to have a good multilingual development, it is very important to start early. The ideal situation would be that children before the age of starting school already had started to learn the school language and at the same time had learned to take pride in the diversity and language competence that their different backgrounds represent. Unfortunately, the kindergarten teachers do not always have the tools to provide this, as matters related to multilingualism and diversity, especially some years ago, were not been a significant part of the curriculum at the teacher education.

In this situation, the Early Childhood Education Department at Oslo Metropolitan University has developed an in-service course about how to handle multilingualism and diversity in kindergarten the best way possible. We believe that more knowledge and education in this area will develop positive thinking of the teachers further and give them a greater sense of confidence and well-being at work.

During the time of the Erasmus+ project, the curriculum of this module has been developed and changed as we have learned from the experiences and promising practices from the other schools and universities.

The most important change we have made is to include more experience and research from different countries in Europe when it comes to multilingualism in early childhood. The Erasmus project has shown us the value of sharing and discussing examples, experiences and research. Diversity is a global matter, so widening the scope to include experiences from different contexts is extremely important.

Both the content and the reading list of the in-service module have been changed, mainly in two ways:

1. Including more examples and experiences from more varying and diverse contexts, not only the Norwegian and English-speaking settings that our previous reading list drew from.
2. Shifting the focus from theories of language learning to examples and case studies of promising practices as a starting point for discussions and reflections.

We are also looking forward to develop this curriculum further to include some of the outputs, examples and materials produced as part of the the Erasmus+ project when these are finished.

The kindergarten teachers attending the module are all working in kindergartens and are doing interventions projects as part of the module. With the new changes we are trying to provide them with more varied ideas to do so.

Unfortunately, this module is not taught at OsloMet currently. After some years where the module was government funded and attending it was free of cost, the budget for this was cut and the attendance would have to be paid for by the students themselves or their employers, which they did not have the possibility to do. But we are still hoping for new funding and the possibility of using our revised curriculum for our in-service students.

Please find below a course description, this is currently only available in Norwegian.

For any queries on this course please contact: Kari Bratland, Dept. of Early Childhood Education, Oslo Met University, Oslo, Norway. Kari.Bratland@oslomet.no