Traditions of Argumentation in Teachers’ Responses to Multilingualism in Early Childhood Education

The researchers investigate how kindergarten teachers who work in multicultural kindergartens in Sweden reflect on the challenges multilingualism can bring.

The results show that the recurring rhetorical strategy used by the kindergarten teachers to talk about their work with multilingual children was characterised by a set of contrasts: 1) I/we versus them (the others), 2) Here-and-now versus there-and-then, and 3) building on kindergarten research versus building on personal experience.

The data material consists of focus group interviews with kindergarten teachers from two Swedish kindergartens. The kindergarten teachers had experience of working among culturally and linguistically diverse groups of children. The conversations in the focus groups were about the children’s introductory days in a new kindergarten. The collected data material comprises six hours of audio recordings from the focus group conversations, which were then transcribed and analysed.

Kultti, A. & Pramling, N. (2020). “Traditions of Argumentation in Teachers’ Responses to Multilingualism in Early Childhood Education”. International Journal of Early Childhood, 52 (3):267–280.