Tünde Puskás

Dilemmatic aspects of language policies in a trilingual preschool group

Abstract This article explores dilemmatic aspects of language policies in a preschool group in which three languages (Swedish, Romani and Arabic) are spoken on an everyday basis. The article highlights the interplay between policy decisions on the societal level, the teachers’ interpretations of these policies, as well as language practices on the micro level. The preschool group is seen as a complex context for negotiating language policies and expectations regarding language use. The theoretical framework builds on Billig’s work on ideological and everyday dilemmas that we argue are detectable at both levels of the analysis. The analysis of the ethnographic material shows that the explicit language policy formulated in the Swedish preschool curriculum leads, in practice, to ideological, pedagogical and everyday dilemmas. Moreover, an unwillingness to set rules for children’s language choice combined with the central position of free play in Swedish preschool practice has led to a situation in which children fall short of their potential to develop bilingual competence.

Picking up the Threads. Languaging in a Swedish Mainstream Preschool.

Abstract This paper examines the strategies monolingual teachers use to scaffold meaning and encourage and enhance verbal communication with emergent bilingual children in a Swedish mainstream preschool. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a preschool group in which seven of twelve children spoke Swedish as their second, additional language. The basic assumption in this paper is that knowledge is scaffolded in talk between teachers and children. Several scaffolding strategies are identified such as guessing, qualified guessing, interactive scaffolding and co-construction of meaning. The analysis shows that successful languaging assumes a high level of trust between the children and their teachers and that it is essential that the teachers can identify each child’s zone of proximal development. Some educational implications and dilemmas are identified on the basis of the results.

Preschool teachers as keepers of traditions and agents of change

According to the Swedish Preschool Curriculum, one of the tasks of the preschool is to pass on a cultural heritage, its values, traditions and history, language and knowledge, from one generation t ...