Children’s family languages are important for their wellbeing, their educational process, and for societal and family participation. In German ECEC institutions, linguistic diversity is widespread and the Social Security Code VIII and the Act on the expansion of day-care (Tagesbetreuungsausbaugesetz) require institutions to take account of diversity. In many federal states, the new versions of education plans for ECEC state that childcare facilities should be open to multilingualism and include children’s family languages into everyday practices. Thus, language education that draws on children’s multilingualism is a key field of action in ECEC (Lengyel and Salem, 2018). The German society, however, is traditionally oriented towards monolingualism, making German the only legitimate language. While the school system reinforces this status, studies in ECEC illustrate that children’s family languages are not valued and often not even appreciated (Panagiotopoulou, 2017). As ECEC is shaped by societal and linguistic power relations, it also contributes to these (Reich, 2008). Scholars hold that pedagogical beliefs, which are part of the professional competence of educators, guide pedagogical action (Fröhlich-Gildhoff et al., 2011). Research on ECEC emphasizes that there is a strong relation between educators’ beliefs and the quality of educational processes (Anders, 2013). With respect to teams in the institutions, Viernickel et al. (2013) showed that there is a relation between their beliefs and the implementation of educational practices, such as the documentation of child development. These studies, however, did not focus on multilingual pedagogies. In this contribution, we present the results of group discussions of our qualitative, in-depth case studies in six ECEC facilities. The research addresses the question how team beliefs on multilingualism and language education are shaped. In each facility, three to seven educators discussed two multi-layered stimuli concerning the aforementioned field of action (Salem et al., 2020). For the analyses, we applied the documentary method (Bohnsack, 2010). This method not only allows the analyses of themes and issues discussed by the group members, it also involves discourse analyses to reconstruct team beliefs. The analysis of our data gives insights in the teams’ conflicts, differentiated perceptions and shared beliefs concerning the use of family languages in the facilities. The findings show how teams are struggling in developing common professional perspectives on multilingual pedagogies that are not driven by personal preferences. They demonstrate the importance of team-oriented professional development for enhancing multilingual pedagogies in ECEC.

Anders, Yvonne. 2013. Stichwort. Auswirkungen frühkindlicher institutioneller Betreuung und Bildung. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft 16(2), 237–275. Bohnsack, Ralf. 2010. Documentary method and group discussions. In Ralf Bohnsack, Nicolle Pfaff Wivian Weller (eds.), Qualitative analysis and documentary method in international educational research, 99–124. Opladen: Barbara Budrich. Fröhlich-Gildhoff, Klaus, Iris Nentwig-Gesemann & Stefanie Pietsch. 2011. Kompetenzorientierung in der Qualifizierung frühpädagogischer Fachkräfte. Eine Expertise der Weiterbildungsinitiative Frühpädagogische Fachkräfte (WiFF). München: Deutsches Jugendinstitut. Lengyel, Drorit & Tanja Salem. 2018. Orientierungs- und Bildungspläne für die Kindertagesbetreuung. In Ingrid Gogolin, Viola Georgi, Marianne Krüger-Potratz, Drorit Lengyel & Uwe Sandfuchs (Eds.), Handbuch Interkulturelle Pädagogik, 441–444. Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt. Panagiotopoulou, Argyro. 2017. Mehrsprachigkeit in der Kindheit. Perspektiven für die frühpädagogische Praxis. München: DJI. Reich, Hans H.. 2008. Kindertageseinrichtungen als Institutionen sprachlicher Bildung. In Diskurs Kindheits- und Jugendforschung, (3)2008, 249–258. Salem, Tanja, Drorit Lengyel, Barbara Graßer & Elke Montanari. 2020. Language education professionals in ECEC institutions – Sprachbildungsprofis in mehrsprachigen Kitas. In European Journal for Applied Linguistics, 8(1), 1–14. Viernickel, Susanne, Iris Nentwig-Gesemann, Katharina Nicolai; Stefanie Schwarz, Luise Zenker. 2013. Schlüssel zu guter Bildung, Erziehung und Betreuung. Bildungsaufgaben, Zeitkontingente und strukturelle Rahmenbedingungen in Kindertageseinrichtungen. Hg. v. Der Paritätische Gesamtverband, Diakonie und GEW. Berlin.