Preschool Bilingual Education: Agency in Interactions Between Children, Teachers, and Parents [Paperback]

This volume provides an up-to-date collection of key aspects related to current preschool bilingual education research from a socio-linguistic perspective. The focus is on preschool bilingual education in multilingual Europe, which is characterized by diverse language models and children's linguistic backgrounds. The book explores the contemporary perspectives on early bilingual education in light of the threefold theoretical framework of child's, teachers', and parents' agencies in interaction in preschool bilingual education. Five significant theoretical concepts are promoted in this volume: the ecology of language learning, an educational partnership for bilingualism, a notion of agency in early language development and education, language-conducive contexts, and language-conducive strategies. The volume examines preschool bilingual education as embedded in specific socio-cultural contexts on the one hand and highlights its universal features on the other. The bookis a fundamental read for scholars and students of second language teaching, preschool education, and bilingual education in multilingual and multicultural societies.

Preface.- Preschool Bilingual Education: Agency in Interactions between Children, Teachers, and Parents,   Mila Schwartz.- Part I: Teachers Challenges in Navigating Bilingual Spaces in their Classrooms and Practical Decisions.- Separating the Languages in a Bilingual Preschool: To Do or Not to Do? Danijela Proai, Danijela Radovi.- Pre-School Bilingual Education in Malta: The Realities and the Challenges, Charles L. Mifsud, Lara Ann Vella.- Whose Challenge is it? Learners and Teachers of English in Hungarian Preschool Contexts, R?ka Lugossy.- Part II: Creating Language-conducive Contexts to Engage Children in Language Learning.- Longing for Quality: Experiences of Finnish-Russian Bilingual Kindergartens in Finland, Ekaterina Protassova.-ló¾