English in Inclusive Multilingual Preschools. Kirsten Birsak de Jersey
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which subscribes to the immersion method of teaching English: this preschool is selected by the parents who wish to send their children to a preschool with a dedicated English language profile. My position in this preschool gave me the opportunity to develop and test task plans and resource materials for early language learning empirically, which included the permission to film the children throughout this time. As a result, I was able to reflect on the quality of tasks and materials as an ongoing process of my professional development: I could observe the ways in which the children responded, if the tasks managed to involve them or if the support that I had provided proved to be appropriate. I was able to integrate relevant theory in developing preschool tasks through a master course on early language learning that I had attended simultaneously (see next paragraph).
During this time as preschool teacher, I felt that I would need to widen my horizon: my practical experience which I had been able to develop would need to be supplemented by theoretical knowledge so that I could substantiate what I was doing in practice and reflect on its appropriateness in supporting the children to learn English. I also wished to be able to aptly address the needs of the increasingly heterogeneous groups of preschool children in a professional way. I was therefore motivated to take a master course that educates primary and preschool teachers in-service to teach English which I completed in 2008 (M.A. E-LINGO – Teaching English to Young Learners (YL), Pre-school and Primary School, www.e-lingo.eu). This Master’s course subscribes to a teacher education model of reflected experience and develops experienced primary and preschool teachers’ competences through research-oriented approaches of learning to teach. It involved reflecting on video-recordings of children learning English which were integrated through a comprehensive media data bank (mediated reflection of practice) and conducting classroom action research projects (CARPs) in participating students’ home classrooms (direct reflection of practice). Experiences were then exchanged and reflected in virtual teams and research results presented and shared in face-to-face meetings. Various tools to support reflection that integrated relevant theory such as journal writing and portfolio work were included (Landesstiftung Baden-Württemberg et al. 2008; Benitt, 2015; Zibelius, 2015). My resulting Master’s thesis covered academic empirical research done collaboratively with a participating colleague on ‘Materials to Promote English Oral Production in a Pre-School Setting’ (2008).
The expertise that I gained through this experience provided the basis for my next step of professional development as a preschool teacher educator for in-service teachers (which means for preschool teachers who work at their preschools with experience in childhood pedagogy but with little or no skills in teaching English). In-service teacher education involved offering courses for teacher education seminars at the Salzburger Verwaltungsakademie-Zentrum für Kindergartenpädagogik (ZEKIP).
In 2012 I started teaching English once a week in an inclusive multilingual state preschool which accepts all the children of its catchment area – a context in which German is a second language for the majority of the children as they come from multicultural and therefore multilingual family backgrounds. The preschool teachers joined my lessons to gain experience in how to teach English to their groups of children. I integrated relevant theory to support informed reflection and answered questions individually at various opportunities. All this happened informally on a voluntary basis and was motivated by preschool teachers’ wish to develop in this field.
Through the expertise I developed in teaching in various preschools and educating preschool teachers at preschools and in seminar courses I was able to develop the competences that are directly relevant for the research which will be presented in the study here: I became well aware of the needs of preschool teachers and of the challenges it would involve implementing an additional English language program in this context. It is through the long-term and heterogeneous involvement with teaching young learners that I could experience the ease at which children acquire a new language – an insight that is backed through research results (see recent summary in: Nikolov & Mihaljevic Djigunovic, 2019) – and consequently I was convinced that English would be a rewarding component of a child’s preschool education. Finally, I was able to develop my teaching skills and produce materials and tasks which meet heterogeneous preschool children’s language learning needs. These materials are also the basis of a publication that is being prepared on a methodology for preschool English teaching which will provide tasks and course materials empirically tested in the various practice contexts in which I have worked (Title: ‘Teaching English in Preschool’). These tasks and materials have also been integrated on the video platform of the E-LINGO Master’s course when it was re-accredited in 2016 which is why E-LINGO was able to offer a special preschool track that addresses this context’s particular language learning needs. I have also become a regular member of the E-LINGO teaching staff and am responsible for tutoring preschool teachers’ course work since that time.
My motivation to embark on the thesis research resulted from the experiences I have outlined above: I wanted to find out if it were possible to educate experienced preschool teachers to teach English for the context of the regular inclusive, multilingual state preschool, which accepts all the children in their catchment area. This meant that I needed to be able to identify a preschool that would qualify as a representative sample case both as regards preschool teachers’ qualification and children’s backgrounds. I was aware that the contextual framework of preschools is characterized by a number of constraints which relate both to Austria’s early language learning policy (→ chapter 2.2.2) and to unfavourable working conditions at state preschools which are not provided with any extra support when they wish to introduce additional programmes for preschool children (→ chapter 3.4.4). Despite these obvious contextual constraints, I had at the same time become convinced that participating teachers would benefit from the experience. I was faced with their often-prevailing attitudes of German first in the beginning which had quite understandably resulted from their concern that introducing another language would be too demanding for their children. However, in time they were able to reassess their initial attitudes the more they were exposed to credible examples of authentic tasks, which demonstrated that the children participate with enthusiasm, benefit from the extra language on offer and develop competences in an additional language with ease.
It was during this time that I started to design a teacher development project for in-service teachers of English in the regular state preschool. It will be outlined in the following chapter.
1.3 Resulting survey of the research structure and research procedure
The study has addressed the issue of the gap between recommendations for early childhood foreign language learning and the lack of provision for the education of qualified teachers in the relatively young domain of early foreign language education. It will empirically research the potential of educating pedagogically experienced preschool teachers in-service to teach English.
The study will first discuss why it is relevant to introduce English into preschool (→ chapter 2). To do so, it will draw on existing research on the benefits of early language learning (which includes the issue of language choice). It will provide a survey on the way that European and consequently Austrian early language learning education policies have considered early language learning in their recommendations and curricula (both as regards learning languages in the preschool and to preschool teacher education).
This will be followed by a detailed analysis of the contextual factors that affect the introduction of English in preschool (→ chapter 3). Providing comprehensive contextual information is required if the research uses a case study design. This seemed appropriate in view of the focus of my study: as there are only few empirical studies on early foreign language teacher education (FLTE), the research will be conducted in the form of a multiple case study “that considers unique localities in their diverse schooling contexts” (Zein, 2019, p. 5) and is, according to the survey of studies presented by Zein and Garton (2019), the dominant research design in this academic field of study at the moment. But the format of case study research is not only appropriate in the light of the limited knowledge base we have on early language teacher development. It also supports the recognition “that quality teaching is unique to the locality where the teaching is carried out, … what is needed within individual contexts, the requirements