Multimodality, embodiment, and language learning in bilingual early childhood education: Enskilment practices in a Swedish–English preschool

Abstract

Institutions of early childhood education and care (ECEC) constitute an important environment for children's learning and development, yet little is known about language-supportive interactions in ECEC settings beyond teacher-led educational activities or children's peer play. This study on a bilingual Swedish–English preschool draws attention to teacher–child interactions during transitional activities as a space for situated learning and enskilment in practical tasks, e.g., dressing or cleaning. Specifically, the study describes how teachers and young children (1–2- and 3–4-year-olds) participate in embodied instructional exchanges amid a one-teacher/one-language policy. The study is based on multimodal conversation analysis of video-recordings collected during ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden. The analysis reveals the teachers' embodied and verbal strategies for instructing and scaffolding children's actions, socializing the children in the institutional interactional routines, and modeling linguistic patterns in two languages. The analysis describes how young children participate in the enskilment practices as agentive members in the preschool as a community of practice and a language learning ecology. The study supports research on the connection between children's participation, the development of embodied skills, and language learning, and highlights the pedagogical value of mundane encounters in ECEC.