TRA_Professional trans-linguistic discernment in early childhood language education:

Abstract

How to sensibly educate young children in and through the language(s) they live by? In an era of increasing linguistic variation and change, this burning question keeps emerging in educational practices of the early years and is addressed in this paper, mapping a professional trans-linguistic discernment. Linguistic variation is a long time a fact, rapidly increasing in all parts of the Swedish society, including early years’ education. Yet, monolingual traditions of linguistic preservation are persisting. The Swedish language legislation aims at safeguarding both the Swedish language and Sweden’s linguistic plurality, ambitions reflected in the preschool curriculum. Aspirations to support children’s development of all their languages are internationally acknowledged as progressive, but the language issue as entangled in early childhood practice is multifaceted. The study is inspired by posthumanist applied linguistics and by contemporary philosopher Jonna Bornemark’s discussion of a professional discernment as a compound competence built in interaction with both experiences and theoretical knowledge, but also feelings and the human senses. These bodily dimensions of discernment make the concept particularly interesting to explore in relation to professions working with young children, where the close relationship between lexical language(s) and other bodily expressions is often made particularly prominent and where the teacher body may be considered a both caring and teaching ‘tool’. RQ1. What challenges and queries emerge at the intersection of practicing curricular linguistic assignments and meeting the linguistic and other diversities of concrete educational practices in early childhood? RQ2. What characterizes a professional discernment in relation to such challenges and queries? Data are produced through focus group interviews with early childhood educators and analyzed through a post-qualitative methodological approach. The results indicate that professionals struggle with how to support the development of languages that they do not themselves speak, and that the support of other mother tongues than Swedish sometimes seems to need to be done at the expense of the Swedish language. Additionally, children’s preference of English, not as a mother tongue, but as a "lingua franca" is pointed out as an emerging phenomenon in groups of children who do not share a common language and where Swedish speakers are a minority. Despite the wide use and special position of English in Sweden, it is still considered a foreign language and not specified in the linguistic assignments of the preschool curriculum. Professionals of early childhood language education are urged to think and act situationally and judiciously, in relation to local practices and different layers of linguistic and other needs, rather than to what may previously be defined and demanded at a generalized level. This, what may be labeled a professional trans-linguistic discernment, differs from recent years’ focus in education on standards and accountability, with an emerging instrumental understanding of teachers who implement and ensure routines, i.e., for language teaching in the early years. It is discussed what encouraging a professional, trans-linguistic discernment may practically, theoretically, and politically require. Keywords: professional discernment, translanguaging/translinguistic, linguistic variation/change, posthumanist applied linguistics, post-qualitative methodologies