In a multicultural society as Sweden, language skills become increasingly important among all citizens as a democratic resource. How well preschool teachers succeed in supporting all children in developing their language is therefore a research area of great interest. A research and development program: Language developing methods in preschool, involving preschool teachers (N=350) and leaders (N=100) from 11 municipalities in Sweden, emanates from this interest that has already rendered several research projects before. Still, the teachers seem unsure about how to make use of the knowledge that has been built up and the preschool leaders worry about the lack of equality among children that this leads to.
The research and development program is set up based on language socialization theory, early language support theories, socio-cultural perspective on learning and communication, translanguaging, didactical theories on language teaching, and action research. The aim is to gain deeper knowledge about 1) how pre-school educators develop their reflection and competences in relation to (trans)languaging with the help of action research, 2) potential (multi)linguistic development among children and different ways to evaluate the development of children’s languaging and language development, and 3) in what ways leadership and collegial collaboration nurture and constrain the on-going development work. Methodologically, action research contributes to collaborative ways of gathering data, where all participants in the program are studying their own practices; preschool teachers study their work with the children and preschool leaders their leading practices. When meeting in dialogue seminars, these studies form the base for dialogues that are documented and sent to the researchers for research studies on an aggregated level. Additionally, the five researchers make field visits to a working team in one preschool in each municipality once every semester to deepen their understanding of the preschool educators’ on-going development work in different local contexts.
In this symposium we intend to present research studies that are formed in relation to the three research questions mentioned above, and their preliminary results. Our hope is that this large-scale research and development program will lead to noticed transformation of the ways didactical work in relation to children’s language development in preschools gets enacted in the future. In this way education may better support every child´s growth to be able to take part as active members of communities, which in the long run will lead to sustaining a democratic society according to a Nordic tradition. However, we realize that this is an ambitious goal which we also wish to discuss at the symposium.
2025.