Whilst contributing to a person’s language, cognitive and personal development and whilst a common practice in the daily lives of bilinguals, translanguaging is rarely observed in educational institutions. The present paper examines the situations and the ways in which preschool children in trilingual Luxembourg translanguage during collaborative storytelling on iTEO, an iPad app which allows for the recording and editing of oral language. Currently 62.4% of children do not speak Luxembourgish on school entry. Language policies focus on the learning of Luxembourgish. This, the small class sizes and the absence of peers with similar language backgrounds may limit the opportunities for translanguaging. The present qualitative, longitudinal study takes a mixed-method approach. The findings show that the 5 focus children in preschool translanguaged frequently, in different ways and for a range of purposes, while drawing on features of several languages. The process of translanguaging depended on the individual child and on contextual factors. We argue that storytelling on iTEO opens up safe translanguaging spaces that contribute to inclusive multilingual pedagogies.
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Cited by (10)
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Jiménez-Jiménez, M. Ángeles & Ana M. Rico-Martín
2023. The Role of L1 in the Pre-primary CLIL Classroom. In Handbook of CLIL in Pre-primary Education [Springer International Handbooks of Education, ], ► pp. 329 ff.
Samuelsson, Robin
2022. Touch and translanguaging in a multilingual early childhood education setting. Multimodality & Society 2:3 ► pp. 300 ff.
2022. Morning circle as a community of practice: Co-teachers’ transmodality in a dual language bilingual education preschool classroom. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy► pp. 146879842211442 ff.
Hill, Kelly & Kaitlyn Allen
2021. “And that’s the end of the story!”: How Nataly Found Her Voice.
Talking Points
33:1 ► pp. 17 ff.
Kirsch, Claudine & Asunción Bes Izuel
2019. Emergent multilinguals learning languages with the iPad app iTEO: a study in primary schools in Luxembourg. The Language Learning Journal 47:2 ► pp. 204 ff.
Lin, Angel M. Y.
2019. Theories of trans/languaging and trans-semiotizing: implications for content-based education classrooms. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 22:1 ► pp. 5 ff.
Kirsch, Claudine
2018. Dynamic interplay of language policies, beliefs and pedagogy in a preschool in Luxembourg. Language and Education 32:5 ► pp. 444 ff.
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2024. Including adults and peers through translanguaging in literacy activities. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development► pp. 1 ff.
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