Abstract
This participatory action research study draws attention to how fifteen preschool teachers develop didactic strategies by using video recording as a method for performing critical and didactic analyses. The overall aim is to develop didactic strategies and knowledge to support multilingual children’s emergent literacy development in Swedish preschools. The starting point for a participatory action research, is action learning and a pragmatic orientation. The approach focuses on human development in an organization where action research is a tool for learning. This study employs a mixed-methods design where qualitative data were analyzed and derived from the preschool teachers’ written reflections related to their video-recorded activities and support of the analysis tool Social Language Environment-Domain, SLE-D (Norling, 2015a). The results show didactic strategies that are related to multilingual children’s interests, strategies that support multilingual children’s empowerment and strategies that challenge multilingual children’s reading and writing processes.Continuing research suggests paying attention to the conditions of multilingual children in preschool education. This entails a long-term effort where action research engages preschool teachers to develop their beliefs into sustainable knowledge, in which video recording can serve as a method for preschool teachers to analyze multilingual strategies.
Highlights
Previous studies have investigated preschool staff’s approaches regarding the emergent literacy environment and preschool staff’s beliefs regarding preschool practices (e.g., Girolametto et al, 2007; Harle & Trudeau, 2006; Jacobs, 2004) as well as preschool teachers’ beliefs and knowledge about children’s language and literacy development (Cash et al, 2015). Lynch (2015) has investigated 79 preschool teachers’ beliefs about teaching language and literacy in preschool
The social language environment encompasses a broader concept of emergent literacy and is defined as: Varied language environments in a social context, in which language, gestures and symbols are based on previous experiences and life stories-that is, the period and the processes in a person’s life leading up to formal reading and writing (Norling, 2015b, p. 101). 2.3 Extended Epistemology One challenge with participatory research is that the theoretical foundations and data collection occur in parallel processes: first, the participant’s process of learning and development and second, the phenomenon that is being studied
The written descriptions of their reflections indicate various activities in which didactic strategies have been systematically tested and critically analyzed constructively in relation to preschool teachers’ beliefs and knowledge. 4.1 Participatory Evolutionary Reality According to Reason and Bradbury (2006), there are questions that are of importance for the credibility, validity and the quality in a participatory project
Summary
Previous studies have investigated preschool staff’s approaches regarding the emergent literacy environment and preschool staff’s beliefs regarding preschool practices (e.g., Girolametto et al, 2007; Harle & Trudeau, 2006; Jacobs, 2004) as well as preschool teachers’ beliefs and knowledge about children’s language and literacy development (Cash et al, 2015). Lynch (2015) has investigated 79 preschool teachers’ beliefs about teaching language and literacy in preschool. 2. Method This study has a participatory action research design (Reason & Bradbury, 2006; Gaventa & Cornwall, 2008), since the intention is to use video recording as a method for preschool teachers to perform critical didactic analyses of teaching activities in order to support multilingual children’s emergent literacy development. The preschool teachers’ written descriptions have a deductive approach (Elo & Kyngäs, 2008), in which their reflections have been coded based on the three dimensions of play strategies, emotional strategies and communicative strategies The purpose of this strategy was to find the content of various didactic strategies concerning support of multilingual children’s emergent literacy development in preschool. The written descriptions were coded in order to prevent traceability and for confidentiality
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