Session Information
31 SES 12 B, Supporting Plurilingualism in Preschool Education
Paper Session
Contribution
The contribution focuses on linguistic diversity according to the ideas and orientations of parents and professionals in early childhood education (ECE) on growing up plurilingually. It also discusses the question how linguistic diversity in ECE can be acknowledged and promoted as a resource. It is based on a study that reconstructs the subjective theories of five parents and five ECE professionals in a qualitative research design. The subjective theories are analyzed with regard to the design of plurilingual education, on the one hand, and with regard to traces and reflexes based on orders of difference and belonging in a migration society, on the other hand.
The theoretical framework of the study includes the recently increased significance of ECE, especially concerning the field of language education and the improvement of educational opportunities, the discourse on quality in ECE (Tietze et al. 2013) as well as the critique of its ethnocentrical reduction (Stamm/Edelmann 2013). Furthermore it takes findings in account concerning the heterogeneity of familial environments and educational concepts (Leyendecker/De Houwer 2011; Otyakmaz 2015; Demuth et al. 2015) as well as research about plurilingualism (Ehlich 2009; Reich 2008a) and its handling in ECE settings (Reich 2008b; Panagiotopoulou 2017; Brandenberg et al. 2017). The developed findings show that societal expectations about normality often contradict the factual familial environments of many children. Especially concerning language acquisition, it is becoming evident that monolingual expectations regarding lingual development do not always match the situation of plurilingual children. Thus, the study includes a theoretical perspective that focuses on the migration societal framing of plurilingual upbringing. Hereby dominant orders of belonging come into focus. Those orders infuse certain ideas of normality with power and establish them on different levels of pedagogy and education, shaping orientations of professionals and parents in a crucial form (Mecheril 2010). From this point of view, it becomes evident how language and the handling of plurilingualism function as central aspects of subjectivation (Butler 2001; Dirim/Heinemann 2016) and construction of identity in the migration society.
The results of the empirical study clearly demonstrate the crucial role of language, home languages and the children's language skills for the parents involved, the goals they pursue in their language education and what they expect of the child-care center. On the part of the professionals, some show a strong orientation towards monolingual concepts of normality, while others emphasize the goal of fostering the children's plurilingual repertoire. A comparison of parents and professionals clearly demonstrates, that their orientations about language and plurilingual upbringing are closely related to their basic ideas about identity, positioning and self-positioning, as well as to experiences within dominant orders of belonging. The subjective theories of the research partners thus reveal how a migration societal framework inscribes itself in their self-concept and in their orientations of language education, and how the presence of dominant discourses is experienced and processed biographically. The dominant monolingual regime of language, which is not represented by all research partners, but is experienced by all of them, contrasts with the plurilingual normality in families and with the reality of plurilingualism in ECE. Moreover, it contradicts the identity-giving role, which the parents attribute to plurilingualism in order to give their children the possibility of multiple belonging and hybrid identity.
Method
Methodologically, the presented study is based on a concept of cultural science analysis that seeks to combine the logic of research of praxeological and discourse-analytical approaches (Reckwitz 2008). In the first instance, the reconstruction of subjective theories stands in the tradition of praxeological approaches, in that the pedagogical actions of parents and profes-sionals are understood as social practice that can be reconstructed by opening up the knowledge schemata, i.e. the subjective theories that constitute them. For this purpose, the methodology of the Subjective Theories Research Program (Groeben/Scheele 2010) was modified and applied. In order to reconstruct the subjective theories of five parents (with differ-ent language backgrounds and migration histories), and five daycare professionals (migrants and non-migrants, monolingual and plurilingual), guided interviews were conducted, tran-scribed and summarized in basic ideas and statements. At a second meeting, the research partners were asked to test these condensations in a communicative validation and to visualize their subjective theory on a poster. In addition to the praxeological perspective, that considers the reconstructed subjective theories with Reckwitz as manifestos of social practice, a dis-course-theoretical perspective was adopted, that focuses on the relationship between text and context. To this end the subjective theories were then submitted to a discourse analysis that unveiled that the subjective theories about growing up plurilingually can be associated with dominant codes of the discourse in migration society. This context of migration society func-tions as a dispositive (Foucault 1991) that structures the ideas and orientations of the research partners based on its subjectivating orders. The selection of the research partners as well as the evaluation of the interviews and the aforementioned analysis of the reconstructed subjec-tive theories are based on the methodology of Grounded Theory (Strauss/Corbin 1996) by ap-plying the theoretic sampling and the evaluation steps of open, axial and selective coding.
Expected Outcomes
In the paper session, selected examples of the subjective theories and their interrelations with the migrant societal context are to be given. In addition, implications for the further develop-ment and professionalization of language education that acknowledges linguistic diversity in ECE and promotes it as a resource are being discussed. This includes the critical reflection of dominant (language) orders and the establishment of alternative concepts of normality, the active inclusion of the parents' perspective, the reflection of the function of language within the framework of an independent educational mission of ECE and the development of professional knowledge about plurilingualism. Against the background of the present study, the work with biographical references seems to be particularly promising. Reflecting upon language, linguali-ty and the personal biography regarding language and education, as well as upon experiences with belonging and exclusion and with dominant (migration) societal orders could contribute to a development of the professional attitude.
References
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