Browsing by Author "Tuominen, Vilma"

The increase of multilingual children in Finnish ECEC has highlighted the need to assess its inclusivity and effectiveness in educating and caring for children from various backgrounds. As early childhood is a crucial time for the development of language, social-emotional skills, and experiences of participation, it is essential that all children are effectively supported in developing these skills and provided with experiences of belonging. This study aims to investigate multilingual children’s participation opportunities during a shared reading and discussion activity. Eleven video-recorded shared reading sessions from different ECEC groups were analysed using qualitative content analysis. Finnish was the language of instruction in all groups. Multilingual children’s behaviour was examined in reference to three categories: active engagement and participation, passive engagement with little participation, or interfering behaviour with limited engagement and participation. Based on these observations, groups were divided into three categories depending on if they were considered to have a lot, some or little participation and engagement for multilingual children. Teachers’ methods for facilitating participation and engagement were also investigated, which resulted in 6 main themes and 19 categories being identified. The analysis revealed that most multilingual children actively participated in the activity, and teachers used multiple methods to facilitate participation and engagement. However, there were several groups where some children did not participate actively and received little support and attention from the teacher. Children’s multilingual competence was also rarely made visible during the sessions, as Finnish was the only language used in all groups. While the findings were generally positive, the lack of support for some multilingual children’s participation and the prevalence of monolingual practices indicate that the use of language-aware and inclusive methods could be developed especially in reference to shared reading.