21st Century Pre-school Bilingual Education

Mila Schwartz, Åsa Palviainen, Mila Schwartz, Åsa Palviainen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780815393184
• eBook ISBN: 9781351189255
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

In this volume, the editors aim to offer a timely focus on preschool bilingual education in the 21st century by drawing attention to the following trends: (1) the diversity of language models and their hybrid, dynamic and flexible nature; (2) the complexities of children's linguistic backgrounds; (3) children's, parents' and teachers' agencies in interaction; and (4) early bilingual development and education as contextually embedded. Given the complexity of providing a global and comprehensive view of these trends in just one issue, the selection of studies included here seeks to offer insightful consideration of these trends using a range of qualitative and quantitative methods. The contributors explore the trends in different socio-cultural and national contexts in five countries: Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Israel and Singapore.

The book highlights the need on the one hand to examine early bilingual education within specific socio-cultural contexts, and on the other to search for its universal features. It aims to promote the field of preschool bilingual education as a unique research domain by illustrating its distinctiveness. Last but not least, the studies presented here have a significant contribution to make in the light of the growing interest of policy-makers, ethno-linguistic community leaders, practitioners and researchers in early bilingual development and education. This book was originally published as a special issue of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism.

Two languages in the air: a cross-cultural comparison of preschool teachers’ reflections on their flexible bilingual practices

Åsa Palviainen, Ekaterina Protassova, Karita Mård-Miettinen and Mila Schwartz

ABSTRACT

Bilingual preschool education is under researched compared with bilingual school education. There is also a lack of research on bilingual preschool teachers’ agency and how they negotiate between two languages in the classroom. We examined the language practices of five bilingual preschool teachers working within three different socio-linguistic settings, in Finland (Finnish–Swedish and Russian–Finnish contexts) and Israel (an Arabic–Hebrew context) and interviewed the teachers about their use of languages in the classroom. We found that in each context the teachers reported modifications to an initial bilingual education model over time: from a strict separation of languages, to flexible bilingual practices. A thematic analysis of the contents of the teacher reflections as they emerged through interviews revealed five shared categories: (a) the flexible use of two languages; (b) responsible code-switching; (c) contextual and linguistic supports; (d) adjustments for individual children; and (e) role-modelling. Despite the different settings and socio-linguistic conditions, the similarities in teachers’ practices and the rationale they gave for applying flexible bilingual practices were significant. The shared practices across contexts may have important implications for bilingual education.

Introduction

The aim of this study was to compare five teachers’ reflections on their own language practices and the challenges they faced in implementing bilingual language education within three contexts of preschool education in Finland (Finnish–Swedish and Russian–Finnish contexts) and Israel (an Arabic–Hebrew context). Ricento and Hornberger (1996) as well as Menken and García (2010) place teachers at the very heart of language policy-making. However, little research attention has been paid to providing bilingual teachers with any deeper understanding of their own agency and their critical role in negotiating, constructing and reconstructing classroom language practices. This is especially true for the context of preschool education and young children’s essential developmental and social needs.

As Heller (2007) has pointed out, language practices are inseparable from beliefs about languages and attitudes towards them in the surrounding society. For this reason we also considered it important to examine how the teachers’ reflections were embedded in the specific educational and socio-political context in which they expressed them, and which possibly had an impact on their language practices. The comparative contexts chosen for this study, Finland and Israel, are both bilingual countries, where Finnish and Swedish, and Hebrew and Arabic, respectively, are official languages. However, for socio-political and historical reasons, the minority languages Swedish and Arabic are differently presented in the linguistic landscape of these countries and also differ considerably in terms of their socio-cultural status (see on the Finnish context, Lindgren, Lindgren, and Saari 2011; and on the Israeli context, Amara 2002). After Finnish and Swedish, Russian has the greatest number of mother tongue speakers in Finland. As an immigrant language, however, Russian in Finland does not have the same strong position as Finnish and Swedish (e.g. Lähteenmäki and Pöyhönen 2015). Differences in terms of status ought to have consequences on bilingual preschool teachers’ aims and language practices and on how these languages are used and acquired by children who speak the majority language (e.g. Shohamy 2010).

The research question to be addressed in the current study concerns how the teachers in the Finnish–Swedish, Russian–Finnish, and Arabic–Hebrew preschools describe and explain their language practices. The data are examined and compared across the three different and unique settings with the aim of identifying common issues and bilingual educational practices in the five teachers’ reflections.

In the following sections, before moving on to our own study, we will present a brief overview of the main bilingual education models and look at research on how teachers in bilingual classrooms have responded to challenges in the realization of these models by constructing and negotiating bilingual spaces and adopting flexible language practices. We will also present a brief description of the socio-linguistic settings that are the context of the current study.

Theoretical background

Bilingual education models

There is a wide range of educational models which may be referred to as bilingual (Baker 2009). García (2009, 310) distinguishes between two main models: those built on strict separation and those based on flexible use of the languages. Within a bilingual model of strict separation, the languages are separated by time (e.g. teaching through one language in the morning and another language in the afternoon), by teacher (one person – one language, monolingual teaching by each teacher), by place (separate classrooms for teaching in each language) or by subject (one subject is taught through one language, e.g. science in Spanish and mathematics in English), or a combination of these. An actual example of a bilingual model in which the teaching is based on strict separation is one-way and two-way immersion education. In immersion programmes, separation is used to enhance second language (L2) acquisition by helping young beginning L2 learners to identify each language more easily and by motivating them to start using the new language more readily. Student talk in immersion classrooms may, however, be bilingual or multilingual, which has also been shown to be advantageous for students’ learning (Swain and Lapkin 2013). Recently, on the other hand, Cummins (2014) as well as Swain and Lapkin (2013) have called for planned, intentional cross-linguistic pedagogy for immersion programmes rather than separation of the languages as two isolated systems.

In a flexible bilingual model, two or more languages are used in combination in the bilingual classroom (García 2009). The concurrent use of the two languages may be applied by teachers or by children or by them both (Creese and Blackledge 2011). One core classroom practice in a successful flexible multiple model is responsible code-switching, in which teachers ‘monitor both the quantity and the quality of their code-switching’ (García 2009, 299). According to García, ‘[s]chools that adopt multiple bilingual teaching have a clear language policy that includes not only the development of bilingual proficiency, but also … plurilingual values of today – multilingual awareness and linguistic tolerance’ (2009, 309; italics García’s own). This bilingual education model could be viewed as a realization of truly bilingual pedagogy (Arthur and Martin 2006; Creese and Blackledge 2010; Cummins 2005).

In recent years, bilingual education models like language immersion programmes that separate languages and educate monolingually for bilingualism have been widely criticized and challenged. García (2013, 157), for example, has pointed out that ‘although bilingual education programs that separate language … might work well for language majorities that are adding additional languages of prestige with power similar to their own’, language separation often builds on the assumption that all children have a similar language background, and is thus not sensitive to multilingual minority language students in the classroom. For such reasons, Weber (2014) and others call for more flexible multilingual practices in classrooms, although he also warns against ‘romanticizing’ flexible bilingual practices and argues that it is crucial to ‘set up an ethical and responsible theory of flexible multilingual education’ (Weber 2014, 7).

Negotiation processes in bilingual classrooms

Hitherto, few studies have focused directly on examining teachers’ attitudes to a policy of strict language separation, and how teachers negotiate between two languages in the classroom and apply diverse flexible bilingual practices (see however Conteh 2007; Gort and Pontier 2013; Hickey, Jewish, and Baker 2014; Swain and Lapkin 2013). Lemberger (1997), in a comprehensive study of bilingual teachers’ reflections on their experience in the USA, concluded that ‘literature written for teachers tells them what they should do without asking them about their own experiences’ (Lemberger 1997, 6).

In the study of Hickey, Jewish, and Baker (2014), teachers in a Welsh immersion preschool reported on the need to negotiate between the demand that they should use Welsh at all times and the children’s diverse linguistic backgrounds. The teachers translated Welsh into English for young children with a predominantly English background to facilitate their understanding and reduce distress. However, there was tension between the need to switch from Welsh to English and the commitment to full immersion in Welsh. In addition, the study showed that the teachers were not sure how much translation was appropriate in a full immersion programme. Swain and Lapkin (2013) reported that individual immersion teachers applied different practices in their use of students’ first language (L1) in the classroom. The practices of the four primary and secondary school teachers in Swain and Lapkin formed a continuum from basically no use of the students’ L1 to frequent use. Unlike the teachers in Hickey, Jewish, and Baker (2014), the teachers in this study did not comment on whether or not their practice was appropriate in an immersion context.

Gort and Pontier (2013) also focused on how teachers used different negotiating processes to reconcile the tension arising from implementing the official policy of language separation while at the same time addressing children’s needs. Their analysis of Spanish/English preschool teachers’ language practices provided insights into such flexible language practices as code-switching, tandem talk (i.e. a pair of teachers coordinates the use of two languages to maintain the use of monolingual speech in a bilingual conversation) and scaffolding techniques (e.g. use of gestures, and visual reinforcement of concepts), which were explicitly used to support children’s engagement and facilitate children’s comprehension.

Menken and García (2010, 1) asserted that ‘regardless of the type of policies or the educational context in which a policy text comes to life in the classroom, there is typically space for policy negotiation in classroom practice’. Such a process of negotiation can be seen in different models of bilingual education across the world. Although an increasing number of studies recently have examined flexibility in language use in bilingual school settings (e.g. García and Wei 2014), few studies have been directed towards bilingual preschool c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Twenty-first-century preschool bilingual education: facing advantages and challenges in cross-cultural contexts
• 1 Two languages in the air: a cross-cultural comparison of preschool teachers’ reflections on their flexible bilingual practices
• 2 Adult monolingual policy becomes children’s bilingual practice: code-alternation among children and staff in an English-medium preschool in Sweden
• 3 The early childhood education and care partnership for bilingualism in minority language schooling: collaboration between bilingual families and pedagogical practitioners
• 4 ‘Why do we know Hebrew and they do not know Arabic?’ Children’s meta-linguistic talk in bilingual preschool
• 5 Nurturing bilingual learners: challenges and concerns in Singapore
• 6 First-language skills of bilingual Turkish immigrant children growing up in a Dutch submersion context
• Index