Holistic Multilingual Early Learning

Lessons From Families, Educators, and Administrators in a Preschool Program

Abstract

The Reggio Emilia approach, including the concept of the hundred languages that children use, offers expansive opportunities for affirming and sustaining the multilingual identities of young children (Fyfe et al., 2023). This paper counters the authoritarian culture of power (Delpit, 1988) in schooling that privileges monolingual, monomodal English as superior and dominant. We examine the intersections of multilingualism and a Reggio Emilia approach in the early childhood context. We draw on data from a study with a public, Reggio-inspired preschool dual language program in a large Midwest city in the US, created and operated in close collaboration amongst administrators, families, teachers, and staff. Through individual interviews and focus groups, families, educators, and administrators shared their perspectives on the history and the current implementation of the program’s curricula, the program structures that sustain the quality of the educators and staff, the impact on children’s development and learning, and the contributions of families and community. We analyze bilingual identity development for young children and their families in the context of dual language schooling, as well as the necessity of uplifting and amplifying multilingualism within foundation pedagogical approaches like Reggio. Finally, we identify ways that multilingual pedagogies, including but not limited to translanguaging and translanguaging universal design for learning (TrUDL) (Cioè-Peña, 2022), are inextricably linked with other seminal approaches to early learning, rather than an afterthought or appendage that must be squeezed into preexisting learning structures.