Children Bilingualism: words, ideas and theories of early childhood caregivers

What do early childhood caregivers know about children bilingualism? Which ideas and theories do they have about children bilingualism, and how do these ideas and theories influence the children’s linguistic socialization with languages of a different mother tongue in early childhood’s educational services? What should they know about children bilingualism to be culturally and professionally prepared to face this educational and developmental issue, and to translate it into everyday linguistic practice and experience in educational services? These are the questions I have tried to answer by conducting, in an infant-toddler centre and in a nursery school in Parma, a research based on early childhood caregivers’ ideas, beliefs and theories. In this research the issue of children bilingualism has been analysed through interviews and dialogues with the caregivers and teachers of the two educational services involved. This work is an extension and deepening of the linguistic themes raised by the international project Children Crossing Borders (www.childrencrossingborders.org) 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, their theories are naive, by early childhood caregivers and teachers and that specific reflections and interventions on children linguistic development have been neglected for a long time in educational services for early childhood. By considering words and speeches of early childhood caregivers and teachers “bilingualism” has been approached as it is perceived in the Italian ECEC services, which is essentially” monolingual”. Bilingualism and – more in general – the issue of the language in the early years is an urgent topic in the current pedagogical debate in Italy, as well as an important matters for developing a training method for teachers. More specifically, starting from these proposals and from the ideas on bilingualism emerged from the data, I have located in “pedagogy of spoken language” the real educational need in childhood’s educational contexts. References Baker, C., (2000), The Care and Education of Young Bilinguals, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon. Genesee, F., Nicoladis, E., Paradis, J., (1995), “Language differentiation in early bilingual development”, in Journal of Child Language, 22, pp. 611-631. Grosjean, F. (1982), Life with Two Languages, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. Grosjean, F. (2008), Studying Bilinguals, Oxford University Press, USA. Mantovani, S., (2007), “Pedagogy”, In New, R.S., Cochran, M. (eds.), Early Childhood Education. An International Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, Wesport, Praeger Publishers, pp.1114-1118. Tobin, J.J., (2004), “Children of Immigrants in Early Childhood Settings of Five Countries: A Study of Parents and Staff Beliefs”, Bernard Van Leer Foundation (222.2004.039).