Publications

Publication details [#62576]

Bergroth, Mari and Åsa Palviainen. 2017. Bilingual children as policy agents: Language policy and education policy in minority language medium Early Childhood Education and Care. Multilingua 36 (4) : 375–400.
Publication type
Article in journal
Publication language
English
Language as a subject
Place, Publisher
De Gruyter

Annotation

This inquiry explores bilingual children as language policy agents in the interplay between official language policy and education policy at three Swedish-medium preschools in Finland. Nine Finnish-Swedish bilingual children aged 3 to 5 years were video recorded for 18 months for this aim. The preschools were located in three diverse parts of Finland, in settings with diverging extents of language dominance. Three types of communicative situations were assayed: an educator-led small group activity, free play with friends, and an activity in which one child was playing alone. Representative dialogs were chosen to elucidate the children’s agency in constructing and enacting bilingual and/or monolingual language policies. The inquiry displays, firstly, that official national language policies can be enacted in various ways depending on the wider practice structures of the site; and, secondly, that each bilingual child holds a unique agency and an active role in the construction of not only the monolingual policy but also a bilingual policy within the frames of early childhood education and care.