Bilinguismo infantile: parole, idee, teorie degli educatori

What do early childhood caregivers know about children bilingualism? How do these ideas and theories influence the children’s linguistic socialization in early childhood’s educational services? These are the questions I have tried to answer by conducting, in an infant-toddler center and in a nursery school in Parma, a research based on early childhood caregivers’ ideas, beliefs and theories. This work is an extension and deepening of the linguistic themes raised by the international project Children Crossing Borders. Research method has included the proposal of focus groups, a video on language realized ad hoc and excerpts of transcripts of focus groups to stimulate discussion. This method has proved itself valuable not only to deepen my understanding of teachers linguistic “theories” but also as a professional development or training process. The research is inscribed in the area of child development and educational studies on adults’ ideas about early childhood, its development and education and it is inspired by the field study model of action research. Data analysis shows that bilingualism is only intuitively known by early childhood caregivers and teachers (their theories are naïve) and that specific reflections and interventions on children linguistic development have been neglected for a long time in educational services for early childhood.