Language, Culture and Curriculum

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Multiple lenses to understand and shape

multilingual literacy practices in Early Childhood
Education

Claudine Kirsch & Nancy H. Hornberger

To cite this article: Claudine Kirsch & Nancy H. Hornberger (2024) Multiple lenses to
understand and shape multilingual literacy practices in Early Childhood Education, Language,
Culture and Curriculum, 37:3, 289-309, DOI: 10.1080/07908318.2024.2335938

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LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM
2024, VOL. 37, NO. 3, 289–309
https://doi.org/10.1080/07908318.2024.2335938

Multiple lenses to understand and shape multilingual literacy

practices in Early Childhood Education
a b
Claudine Kirsch and Nancy H. Hornberger
a
Faculty of Humanities, Education, Social Sciences, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette,
Luxembourg; bGraduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Programs of multilingual education in Early Childhood Education Received 7 December 2023
and Care (ECEC) are promising because they contribute to the Revised 14 March 2024
development of young children’s language and literacy as well as Accepted 22 March 2024
their multilingual identities. In practice, many educators are
KEYWORDS
unsure of how to engage children in multilingual literacy Continua of biliteracy; Early
activities and policy often falls short of providing adequate Childhood Education and
guidance. The present paper investigates the case of Luxembourg Care; Luxembourg;
where a multilingual program has been implemented over the multilingual education;
last years. We draw on the continua of biliteracy to examine the literacy practices;
range of language and literacy practices of 12 educators who translanguaging
worked with two to four-year-olds in three private, commercial
centers differing in regional location, urban or suburban setting,
and dominant language spoken. Using the lenses of the biliteracy
continua of context, media, content, and development, we
analyze examples, explain differing practices, and explore the
educators’ varied understandings of languaging, literacy, and
learning. We thereby demonstrate that the continua are a
heuristic for research, teaching, and policymaking in multilingual
environments. We conclude with implications for professional
development, policymakers, and researchers.

1. Introduction
In Europe and worldwide, more and more young children grow up speaking two or more
languages and many develop the majority language of the country they live in with the
support of professionals in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) (Bergeron-Morin
et al., 2023). Including children’s home languages in language and literacy activities in
ECEC makes young children not only aware of the plurality of languages and supports
their language development, but it also contributes to their openness and confidence,
facilitates socialisation, and reinforces multilingual identities (De Houwer, 2020; Hélot,
2007). While the outcomes of multilingual ECEC programs are promising, many ECEC pro-
fessionals appear unsure of how to promote multilingualism and of which language and
literacy activities to offer in one, let alone several languages (Kirsch & Bergeron-Morin,

CONTACT Claudine Kirsch [email protected]

© 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/
licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s)
or with their consent.
290 C. KIRSCH AND N. H. HORNBERGER

2023). Participation in a professional development course helped ECEC teachers and edu-
cators in multilingual Luxembourg develop the necessary knowledge, attitudes, and skills
to implement multilingual pedagogies (Kirsch et al., 2020).
Luxembourg is one of few countries in Europe with a national policy on multilingual-
ism in ECEC. Since 2017, professionals have been asked to familiarise children with
Luxembourgish and French and value their home languages. This is a difficult call on
account of the heterogeneity of the centers and the language diversity of the children.
According to a survey with parents of children aged zero to four, one-third of the children
speak one language at home, one third two and the final third speak three or more
languages (SNJ, 2023). Following the implementation of the language-in-education
policy, the mixed-method project ‘Collaboration with parents and multiliteracies in
Early Childhood Education’ (2020–2023) explored, examined, and tried to develop litera-
cies in multiple languages in day care centers with educators and parents. Findings relat-
ing to multilingualism and literacies based on observations in three centers show that the
educators offered various types of literacy activities in the main language of the center
and, depending on the setting and the educator, included (or not) children’s home
languages (Kirsch & Bergeron-Morin, 2023). Translanguaging (García et al., 2011), the stra-
tegic use of one’s entire semiotic repertoire for communication, was a legitimate practice
in two centers. The range and formality of the activities, their length and frequency, the
space given to writing, as well as the quality of the interactions differed significantly
across the centers (Kirsch & Kemp, 2024; Kirsch, under review).
In the present paper, Kirsch, the principal investigator, and Hornberger, the scientific
expert of the project, review the above-mentioned findings in line with the continua of
biliteracy (Hornberger, 1989; 2022). The aim of the present reflection is, firstly, to offer
new and deeper perspectives on the literacy practices documented in Luxembourg
and, second, to illuminate and inform the continua by bringing it to bear in a new
context. Formulated in the 1980s in the context of a multi-year, comparative ethnography
of language policy in two Philadelphia public schools and communities, the continua of
biliteracy offer lenses through which to see research, teaching, and language policy in
bilingual and multilingual settings. The framework has served as heuristic in research,
teaching, and program development locally, nationally, and internationally in Indigenous,
immigrant, diaspora and decolonising language education contexts, evolving over time
to accommodate both a changing world and a changing scholarly terrain.
Two foundational notions – of biliteracy as interpretation and interaction around
writing in two or more languages and of fluid and dynamic continua making up commu-
nicative repertoires – are the building blocks for the continua of biliteracy framework.
Twelve continua are grouped into four three-dimensional sets or lenses that bring into
focus multiple dimensions involved in creating learning environments (contexts) that
recognise and build on (develop) students’ language and literacy repertoires (media)
and the meanings and identities expressed therein (content). The framework’s intersect-
ing and nested continua represent the multiple, complex, and fluid interrelationships
between bilingualism and literacy and of the contexts, media, and content through
which biliteracy develops. Alternating the lenses allows us to see in turn that multilingual
learners develop biliteracy along reciprocally intersecting and dynamic first language-
second language, receptive-productive, and oral-written language skills continua;
through the medium of two or more languages and literacies ranging along continua
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 291

of similar to dissimilar linguistic structures, convergent to divergent scripts, and simul-

taneous to successive exposure; in contexts scaled from micro to macro levels and charac-
terised by varying mixes of monolingual-bilingual and oral-literate language practices;
and expressing content encompassing majority to minority perspectives and experiences,
literary to vernacular styles and genres, and decontextualised to contextualised language
texts. The framework posits that the more bi/multilingual students’ contexts of language
and literacy use allow them to draw from across the whole of each and every continuum,
the greater are the chances for their full language and literacy development and
expression. It is precisely in the dynamic, rapidly changing and sometimes contested
spaces along and across the continua that biliteracy use and learning occur. We argue
that in the case of Luxembourg, as in others, the continua of biliteracy lenses offer a
vision for intentionally opening up implementational and ideological spaces for fluid,
multilingual, oral, contextualised practices and voices at the local level (Hornberger,
1989, 1990, 2005, 2022; Hornberger & Skilton-Sylvester, 2000; Hornberger & Link, 2012).
In what follows, after first providing a brief overview of the research design, partici-
pants and methods, our reflection is organised around the alternating lenses of the con-
tinua. We offer examples of literacy practices observed in the research project and explore
the educators’ understandings of languaging, literacy, and learning, using the lenses of
the biliteracy continua of context, media, content, and development to analyze examples
and explain practices. Discussion of relevant literature is included in these sections.
Finally, we draw implications for professional development, policymakers, and
researchers.

2. Methodology
To develop literacies and collaboration with parents, the COMPARE research team had
organised a professional development course with the managers and the specialised edu-
cators for multilingual education of 12 ECEC centers in Spring 2020. The participants could
volunteer to take part in an observational study the following academic year. To maximise
diversity in our sample, we chose interested centers in different regions of Luxembourg
and with different language profiles. The center in West Luxembourg was Luxembourg-
ish-dominant while Luxembourgish and German were the main languages of the setting
located in the East, close to the German border. The educators in these centers were
fluent in Luxembourgish, German, French, and English and some could also communicate
in Portuguese with the children. The center close to Luxembourg-city was French-
dominant as it employed mainly French staff. Some of these educators communicated at
times in English or Italian with children but translanguaging was less frequent than in
the other two centers. In each setting we observed a diverse group of children aged 2–4.
The following languages were recorded: Luxembourgish, French, German, Portuguese,
English, Italian, Spanish, Swiss German, Romanian, Greek, Icelandic, Russian, Arabic and
Hebrew (Kirsch & Bergeron-Morin, 2023; Kirsch & Kemp, 2024; Kirsch, under review).
This paper draws on observations made by four researchers between September 2020
and October 2021. The observational data of interactions of 12 educators and 9 children
were collected over 48 days and included fieldnotes, thick description and 13 h of video-
recording. Most videos were transcribed, and relevant details were added, others were
described in detail. Based on conversation analysis from a sociocultural perspective
292 C. KIRSCH AND N. H. HORNBERGER

(Seedhouse, 2005), and depending on the focus of the above-mentioned papers, the
coding included the type of literacy activity (e.g. reading, telling stories, singing, writing),
the languages used (e.g. languages and translanguaging), the educators’ strategies to
promote interaction and understanding (e.g. asking questions, correcting, translating,
repeating), and the role of the educators, children, and parents (e.g. reading stories, enga-
ging in dialogue about the stories).
While the present reflection is based on findings from the above-mentioned papers, it
presents unpublished examples which it discusses in relation to the continua of biliteracy.
Therefore, in addition to the previous codes, the analysis takes account of the monolin-
gual or multilingual participants (contexts); the similarities/ differences between the
languages and scripts as well as the simultaneous/ successive exposure to the various
languages (media); the ways in which children’s language identities were presented as
minoritized/ majoritized in more contextualised/ decontextualised activities with
various text genres (content) and, finally, the ways in which children listened, spoke,
read or wrote by drawing on home languages or other languages to develop their
language and literacy skills (development). To illuminate the continua, we present what
we call an ‘impressionistic rendering’, thereby adopting Katherine Mortimer’s use of
blue circles to highlight salient continua in play (Mortimer & Hornberger, 2023). The
circles on each of the 12 continua represent our impressionistic understandings of the
educator-child interactions in literacy activities in one or more languages and scripts.
While each rendering offers a multilayered overview of an activity, the comparison of
the renderings helps us to visualise similarities and differences between activities at
various levels.
Prior to data collection, the project had been approved by the Ethics Review Panel of
the University of Luxembourg. The educators and parents had been informed about the
purpose, risks and outcomes of the study as well as their rights, and given consent. To
gain and maintain the assent of the young children in our project, we only observed
them in naturally occurring situations in the presence of their educators. To ensure anon-
ymity of the educators and centers, and focus on literacy practices rather than individual
educators, we will not mention the dominant languages of the centers in the examples
provided.

3. Understanding language and literacy practices: context of biliteracy

We start with a concrete example that illustrates the ways in which informed ECEC prac-
titioners in Luxembourg created a productive environment that promoted the receptive
and productive use of three languages in oral and written communication.
Example 1. A poster for the caregiver (October 2020)

To make a present for the children’s father or caregiver, the educators created a poster for
each child which showcased a picture of the child’s caregiver, an explanation of the child
written by the educator, as well as other multimodal expressions of the child. A few days
before the production of the posters, the educators who knew that all children had two care-
givers, had written to the mothers or caregivers in Luxembourgish, German, French, or Por-
tuguese, depending on their competences, to ask them to send in a picture of their partner.
While out in the forest, the educators showed the children this picture on the iPad. They let
children speak about it first, which resulted in many children participating independently of
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 293

the language. For instance, when three-year-old Portuguese-speaking Davide struggled with
Luxembourgish, he was encouraged by Portuguese-speaking Ms. Daria to tell his story in his
home language. Pointing at the picture of him and his father at the hairdresser’s, he explained
his hair was ‘muito grande’, too long. He then moved his index and middle fingers up and
down to sign cutting. Gloria, another Portuguese-speaking child, listened carefully. Lia,
who spoke Swiss German at home, repeated ‘grande’ after her peer, while two other children
mentioned in Luxembourgish that they had been to the hairdresser’s as well. Another child
added that his hair was longer when he left, an utterance that one of the educators revised,
offering the word ‘shorter’. Once the story was told, the educators asked each child what they
should write down and one educator took down the accounts. Lia and Gloria stayed close to
the scribe. They carefully observed, pointed to words or lines, or asked questions such as
‘Where is [the word] Nick?’. The educator pointed to the words and, at times, mentioned
‘Look, here it says daddy’. Over the following days, the educators wrote the final version
on each poster. Depending on the child, the text was in one language, Luxembourgish or Por-
tuguese, or in two, for instance, in Luxembourgish and Swiss German. Motivated, the children
added marks, scribbles, or stroke units as well as drawings.

The languaging practices of the educators and children in this example were typical of our
year-long observations, and, therefore, representative (e.g. Kirsch & Bergeron-Morin,
2023). To help children develop their multilingual identity and express themselves, the
educators created authentic situations where children could take part in oral and
written communication. When translanguaging, children used all communication chan-
nels, that is features of several languages, several modes, and several tools, receptively
and productively (Hornberger, 1990, 2005). This example is reminiscent of a study in
Philadelphia USA showing the rich multilingual contexts crafted by two primary school
teachers. One helped children learn English and Spanish in a dual-language program,
and the other focused on English while taking account of the learners’ knowledge of
Khmer (Hornberger, 1990).
To comprehend the educators’ and children’s communicative repertoire and under-
stand why the adults promoted biliteracy in this particular way in Luxembourg, it is essen-
tial to understand the context of multilingualism in policy and practice in Luxembourg. In
the continua of biliteracy framework, contexts for developing one’s full communicative
repertoire are understood as scaled local to global spaces created by three intersecting
continua which have long informed multilingual education research and practice,
namely the continua of multilingual to monolingual competences and uses, oral to
literate practices and instances, and micro to macro situations and environments
(Hornberger, 1989, 2022). We bring these lenses to consider the ways they shape
Luxembourg’s linguistic landscape and language-in-education policies, and in turn the
three ECEC centers we observed.

3.1. The linguistic landscape

Multilingualism is a defining characteristic of all macro and micro features of life in Lux-
embourg. In the nineteenth century, German was considered the language of the popu-
lation, while French dominated in higher social groups. In the twentieth century,
Luxembourgish, a Moselle-Franconian dialect elevated to the status of a language in
1984, became the national language as well as a symbol of Luxembourgish identity
and independence (Horner & Weber, 2008). Luxembourgish, German and French
294 C. KIRSCH AND N. H. HORNBERGER

became the official languages. The language situation is, however, more complex, partly
explained by migration waves in the twentieth century where industrialisation and, later,
the establishment of European institutions and the financial sector encouraged the
growth of an international population. In 2019, 74% of the residents reported working
in a multilingual environment. Those in the education sector communicated mainly in
Luxembourgish, French, German, English, and Portuguese (Reiff & Neumayer, 2019). A
large survey with parents of children aged zero to four provides insights into the declared
language use at home: 62% of the families report speaking French, 56% Luxembourgish,
25% English, 22% Portuguese, and 17% German (SNJ, 2023).
The residents’ language and cultural diversity is reflected in the linguistic landscape.
Official, commercial, and private signs are frequently written in several of the official
languages, advertisements can be in the official languages as well as in the contact
languages Portuguese, Italian, and English, and the written press includes more and
more Luxembourgish which currently undergoes standardisation and codification
(Purschke, 2017). Language diversity was also a characteristic feature of the three
centers as seen in Section 2. While all centers had a highly diverse group of two to-
four-year-olds, the educators in two of the centers were multilingual and tended to trans-
language frequently. Multilingualism across macro to micro contexts helps explain both
the language skills of the adults and children, presented in Example 1, and, more impor-
tantly, the legitimacy of translanguaging which is a common societal practice in Luxem-
bourg (Horner & Weber, 2008).

3.2. Language-in-education policies

The state education system aims to develop children’s competences in Luxembourgish,
German, and French in its primary school, with challenging oral and written standards
expected in each language (MENJE, 2022). To help their children develop Luxembourg-
ish from an early age, many parents enroll them in a day care center (non-formal edu-
cation) and from the age of three in the optional year of early education (formal
education). The language use of educators in non-formal education differs according
to institutions. While state-funded centers recruit Luxembourgish staff, the private
sector largely employs French-speaking staff who live in Luxembourg or commute
daily from France or Belgium (Schreyer et al., 2024). Ethnographic studies prior to the
2017 language-in-education policy have shown that educators in both Luxembourgish-
dominant and French-dominant centers largely held on to monolingual language ideol-
ogies (Neumann, 2015).
One of the Education Ministry’s steps taken to reduce the persistent inequalities in
attainment and strengthen educational opportunities is the 2017 policy on multilingual
education that focuses on Luxembourgish and French while valuing other home
languages. Educators in a Luxembourgish-dominant setting develop children’s skills in
Luxembourgish and familiarise them with French whereas those in French-dominant
centers do the opposite. Educators’ practices need to be informed by the national frame-
work for childhood and youth (MENJE & SNJ, 2022). Multilingualism is a transversal strand
of the document that promotes a holistic view of language learning, encouraging educa-
tors to use languages flexibly, and understanding children’s switching between languages
as normal linguistic practices. It promotes partnerships with parents as a means to value
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 295

children’s home languages and suggests a range of literacy activities (e.g. stories, finger
plays, first scribbles, discovery of books and symbols) to develop languages and literacy
in multiple languages. While reading and talking about texts in multiple languages can
appear to be oral activities to an ECEC observer’s ear, they in fact promote biliteracy
because ‘communication occurs in two (or more) languages in or around writing’ (Horn-
berger, 1989, p. 2). Example 1 highlights the powerful role that context plays in framing
and shaping language and biliteracy practices and illustrates the language policy in
action: it shows the ways in which the multilingual educators in a Luxembourgish-domi-
nant center communicated in Luxembourgish but switched to Portuguese to accommo-
date a child’s needs and drew on Swiss German to respond to the interest of another child.
They valued home languages orally and in writing. By contrast, other multilingual educa-
tors and emergent multilingual children we observed acted as monolinguals. What
elements other than the structural, organisational and ideological aspects we have
briefly outlined explain the diversity in the language and literacy practices despite the
new policy?

4. Understanding multilingualism and translanguaging: media of

biliteracy
In line with the education policy in ECEC settings in Luxembourg, the educators in
Example 1 designed an inclusive and participatory environment where children were
encouraged to use their entire semiotic repertoire (e.g. features of several languages,
gestures, pointing, scribbles) to communicate (García, 2023). The poster is a good
example of cultural and linguistic diversity as well as multiliteracies (Cope & Kalantzis,
2009), reflecting a multiplicity of communication channels and media (visual, audio,
tactile, gestural, behavioural, spatial, temporal) (Hornberger, 2005). It incorporated
the use of different technological tools and each child’s final product combines pic-
tures, drawings, random letters glued on the paper, their own scribbles and stroke
units, and hand-written text, all in one or more languages depending on the child’s
own language use.
The continua of biliteracy framework proposes the media of biliteracy as the commu-
nicative repertoire that includes multiple and fluid language varieties, scripts, modes and
modalities of communication (Hornberger, 2022) through which learners develop bilite-
racy. In the framework, this repertoire of media is arrayed along three intersecting conti-
nua which have long informed multilingual education research and practice, namely the
continua of simultaneous to successive exposure to/acquisition of languages and lit-
eracy, dissimilar to similar language structures and divergent to convergent language
scripts (Hornberger, 1989). We bring these lenses to consider the ways they shape the use
of multiple language varieties, scripts, modes and modalities of communication in the
three ECEC centers we observed.
We illustrate Example 1 in an ‘impressionistic rendering’, focusing for now on the first
two lenses of the continua (context and media). The educators and children in that
example engaged monolingually or multilingually, depending on the person, in a literacy
activity that focused on oral language development as requested by the national frame-
work for ECEC and the language-in-education-policy (context). The languages involved,
Luxembourgish, Portuguese, and Swiss German, had similar structures and scripts
296 C. KIRSCH AND N. H. HORNBERGER

(media). Children were exposed to the languages both simultaneously as they and the
educators translanguaged, and successively, as children took turns to narrate and as
the activity was carried out over several days.
Impressionistic rendering 1. Overview of Example 1: Focus on Context and Media.

However, in contrast to the above, observations across the three centers showed that
not every educator allowed children to activate all modes and channels of communi-
cation, and home languages did not always count as cultural capital as they did in
Example 1 (Kirsch & Bergeron-Morin, 2023; Kirsch, under review). Differing views of multi-
lingualism and translanguaging appear to underpin these practices and explain
differences.

4.1. Translanguaging
Seen from the perspective of the continua of biliteracy, translanguaging refers both to
learners’ dynamic languaging practices and to the pedagogical practices that enable lear-
ners to develop their oral and written repertoires in their multilingual community and
educational settings (Hornberger & Link, 2012). Two-thirds (or 8) of the educators we
had observed across the three centers appeared to understand multilingualism as the
flexible and dynamic manner in which multiple languages could be used either by the
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 297

same person, for instance in mixed utterances, or in the same conversations where one
person used features of one language while another one drew on features of a
different one. In the transglossic conversation in Example 1, one educator conversed in
Portuguese with Davide and wrote his account in his home language, while the second
educator and other children communicated in Luxembourgish even while paying close
attention to the interactions in Portuguese. Based on conversations and interviews, the
educators who used languages flexibly appeared to perceive translanguaging as a
useful strategy (Poza, 2017) to develop a trusting relationship with children, develop an
inclusive environment, make themselves understood, and help children communicate
in ways similar to ECE professionals elsewhere (e.g. Mary & Young, 2017; Sembiante
et al., 2023). Our observations also showed that translanguaging helped the young chil-
dren communicate (e.g. Sembiante et al., 2023), socialise (e.g. García et al., 2011; Sanders-
Smith & Dávila, 2019), and mark their multilingual identity (e.g. Carrim & Nkomo, 2023). By
using all modes, signs, and symbols at their disposal to make and express meaning, they
disregarded the social boundaries between languages and semiotic systems that adults
have constructed (García, 2023).
There were other instances where educators appeared not to be aware of the
language hierarchies they reproduced, nor of the transformative power of translangua-
ging (García & Otheguy, 2020). A few examples illustrate this. Some educators strictly
used the dominant language of the center and the children learned to converse
with the adults and peers in this language, thereby suppressing their home language.
These educators rarely communicated in any other languages, even if they knew them,
and made no effort to learn a few words in Greek or Arabic which were among the
home languages of the children. Such examples bring to mind the implementation
of bilingual education in other countries, for instance in France (Hélot, 2007), where
minority languages were not considered. Other educators seemed to use languages
spontaneously or at random. For example, some Portuguese-speaking educators com-
municated in Portuguese with some three-year-olds, independently of the children’s
language needs, but refrained from using French or German with other children,
even when the children knew these languages well. These educators appeared
unaware of their language choices and possibly switched languages out of habit (as
they would do outside the center) rather than for educational purposes, such as
helping children develop language skills and including them.
Yet again other educators intended to value home languages in multilingual activities
but did not always succeed in leveraging children’s repertoires for learning and being. For
example, some labeled pictures in books in Luxembourgish, French, and German, and
their translations seemed to fulfill no other role than to implement the language
policy. Others invited parents to the center to read in a home language (see Example 2
below) but this language vanished when the parents left. Again, others asked parents
to send in songs in multiple languages but then showed uncertainties in the enactment
of the activities themselves. We observed some sing ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’ in
Luxembourgish, German, French, Portuguese, and Swiss German, but they became hesi-
tant when they were to sing in Icelandic. They explained that the language was difficult
and, in this way, may have shown they valued languages differently. In the above-men-
tioned examples, some children may have felt othered or excluded rather than valued
and included.
298 C. KIRSCH AND N. H. HORNBERGER

Together, the above-mentioned analyses highlight a wide range of practices along the
simultaneous-successive continuum in the ways in which educators drew on the
languages and scripts of the children’s communicative repertoires orally and in writing.
We argue that flexible multilingual practices need to be carefully monitored and based
on a responsible theory of multilingual education to guarantee equal status to languages
and equal participation of children (Aleksić & García, 2022; Hamman, 2018; Seltzer et al.,
2020). This includes paying attention to the content of the literacy activities, explored in
the following section.

5. Understanding literacy: content of biliteracy

The national framework (MENJE & SNJ, 2022) for ECEC in Luxembourg expects educa-
tors to offer literacy activities in multiple languages. It refers briefly to books and first
scribbles without providing further details or guidance. In many bi(multilingual) con-
texts (Englezou & Fragkuli, 2014; Kirsch & Aleksić, 2021) as well as in ECEC settings
where children are exposed to foreign languages (Thieme et al., 2022), stories are
among the most frequent literacy activities. Example 2, a representative example of
the ways in which parents were included in literacy activities in some of the three
centers (e.g. Kirsch & Bergeron-Morin, 2023), illustrates the ways in which a mother,
assisted by her child, read the Russian story Teremok. She read the entire tale in her
home language, which only she and her child understood, before the educator
moved back to the dominant language of the center.
Example 2. A Russian story (November 2020)

Antonia’s mother explained in the dominant language of the center that she would first read
the story in Russian and then narrate it in the dominant language of the center. She pre-
sented the characters of the book, showed the children the figurines she had brought, and
began to tell the story in Russian. Antonia assisted her mother by handing her the
figurines she pointed to and adding words in Russian to complete her mother’s sentences.
The girl uttered longer sentences on two occasions and her mother expanded. After five
minutes, the team had finished. The mother asked if anybody had understood, but her ques-
tion was left unanswered. Rather, the educator and the children showered her in lavish
applause. The educator neither took up the mother’s offer to tell the story in the dominant
language of the center nor engaged the children in a conversation about the content of
the story. She showed three figurines that the mother labeled in Russian, repeated these
words, encouraged the children to do the same, and announced that they had spoken
some Russian. The mother left and no further reference was made to her visit or the language
at a later stage.

Three intersecting continua of biliteracy content take account of the identities and
meanings expressed through biliterate practices and the important role of the continua
of contextualized to decontextualized texts and activities, vernacular to literary
styles and genres, and minority/ized to majority/ized identities and experiences in
developing learners’ biliteracy. This was an insight originally proposed in Skilton-Sylve-
ster’s research on literacy, identity and educational policy among Cambodian women
and girls in Philadelphia, and led to expansion from the original nine continua of
context, media, development (Hornberger & Skilton-Sylvester, 2000). We draw on the
continua of biliteracy content to explore and reflect on the types of biliteracy texts,
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 299

genres, and identities observed in the centers, and the understandings of literacy poss-
ibly underlying them.
Impressionistic rendering 2 illustrates Example 2 in relation to all continua. To
implement the education policy in a largely monolingual center and offer activities
with parents to contribute to children’s oral language learning (context), the educators
had invited Antonia’s mother to the center. The latter read a Russian story and
exposed children to a language and script unfamiliar to them (media and content). The
monolingual activity in Russian about a story with unknown characters remained
largely decontextualised, although the mother had offered to translate the text into
the dominant language and leave the book so that children could explore it. Apart
from Antonia, positioned as the minority-language speaker, who uttered some sentences
in Russian, the other children listened and some repeated three words in Russian (devel-
opment). In contrast to Rendering 1, which indicated opportunities to draw from across
the whole of each and every continuum, Impressionistic rendering 2 suggests that chil-
dren tended to work on one side of each continuum. As such, we argue that this learning
environment affords fewer opportunities for them to develop and express language and
literacy skills.
Impressionistic rendering 2. Overview of Example 2: Focus on Content.
300 C. KIRSCH AND N. H. HORNBERGER

Observed differences in the types of biliteracy texts, genres, and identities offered
across the three centers might reflect educators’ differing understandings of literacy, as
explored in the next section.

5.1. Texts, genres, and identities

Literacy can be understood, in a narrow sense, as a set of discrete skills that need to be
developed to be able to read and write text or, in a broader sense, as a practice that con-
structs and reflects cultural and social identities. Street (1995) contrasts these in the
‘autonomous model of literacy’ which appears ‘neutral’ as it focuses on cognitive skills
and avoids any reference to the social and cultural context, and the ‘ideological model’
that is based on sociocultural theories and emphasises the interconnectedness of skills,
social interactions, and cultural context (Barton & Hamilton, 1998). These need not rep-
resent opposing understandings of literacy, however, but different aspects to be con-
sidered when developing students’ literacy skills and embedding literacy as a cultural
practice.
Based on the observations and interviews, the COMPARE team found that a third of
the educators in our study tended to perceive literacy as a social and cultural practice
while also acknowledging literacy skills (Kirsch & Bergeron-Morin, 2023; Kirsch & Kemp,
2024; Kirsch, under review). For example, the educators in Example 1 engaged children
in contextualised oral and written productions in the dominant language of the center
and children’s home languages, thereby validating children’s multilingual identities and
experiences and encouraging children to relate aspects of stories to their own experi-
ences. At the same time, they attentively listened to children, rephrased or expanded
answers, offered corrective feedback, or translated when necessary to help children
identify key elements of stories, understand the plot, and develop skills in the dominant
language of the center.
Other educators appeared to focus only on the development of discrete skills. Some
instrumentalized stories to practice mathematical concepts (counting, size), develop
vocabulary (colours, names of animals), or develop listening skills. Little attention was
paid to the content and few meaningful connections were made with the children’s
prior experiences (cf. Kirsch, under review). These educators also tended to use stories
in children’s home languages to highlight minoritized identities, as seen in Example 2,
but without engaging in those languages and cultures. On such occasions, we observed
the educators leave the floor to the parents, who, unsure of what and how to read in the
center, frequently replicated their home literacy practice although they were aware that
the educators and children were unable to understand the particular language or literacy
genre presented in a decontextualised activity. One wonders if such literacy events allow
children to appreciate the richness and diversity of languages and cultures as intended.
Showcasing Russian in this way may reinforce boundaries between languages and cul-
tures rather than challenge monolingual ideologies (García & Otheguy, 2020). Like the
children in a Luxembourgish preschool who were forced in a home language activity
to choose Portuguese or Serbian flags according to their citizenship although they
insisted on taking the Luxembourgish flag (Aleksić & García, 2022), the activity in
Example 2 may result in children making strong and inflexible connections between
language, citizenship, cultural background, and identity (Horner & Weber, 2008), rather
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 301

than developing a more fluid view of transnational literacies contextualised across

national borders (Hornberger & Link, 2012).
A counterexample comes from the well-known ‘Diedenheim project’ in France where
the teachers developed an educational project with the parents and helped them prepare
the cultural content (e.g. languages, history, food) they wished to share with the children
(Hélot & Young, 2002). As a result, the parents provided children with rich, contextualised
opportunities to, among other matters, engage with languages of dissimilar structures
and scripts. Example 2 also contrasts with Example 1, where the educators and children
put home languages alongside the majority language. This is a powerful way to validate
languages equally and develop multilingual competence. The multilingual and multimo-
dal productions in Example 1 are reminiscent of Cummins and Early’s (2011) ‘identity
texts’ in Canada.
In summary, the examples illustrate how educators’ understandings of literacy might
inform pedagogical practices that emphasise different points along the content continua
from minority/ized to majority/ized identities, vernacular to literary styles and genres, and
contextualised to decontextualised texts and activities.

6. Understanding learning: development of biliteracy

The range of examples of language and literacy practices given throughout this article
provides ample evidence that the young children were engaged in the development of
their biliteracy although to different extents, and very much in response to the commu-
nicative demands of the situation and activity. How the educators developed children’s
literacy skills, however, likely depended not only on their understandings of literacy but
also on their understandings of learning. While the educators in Example 1 involved
children in translingual conversations and modeled language use, the educator in
Example 2 encouraged listening and the reproduction of a few isolated words. Like
other educators influenced by a skills-based approach, she tended to read stories in
the dominant language of the center and check comprehension through closed
questions.
Below is a final example, illustrating the way in which an educator used prompts in
multiple languages to develop children’s understanding of a text.
Example 3. Reading and talking in multiple languages (January 2021)

The educator chose a small hardboard book with flaps and ensured all three-year-olds sat on
the small carpet area in front of her. She suggested ‘Let’s look at the book The sea is deep and
gigantic’, reading out the title. ‘Should we look at the book together?’, she asked and upon
the children’s confirmation, began. She read the first sentence in a language most children
understood well before she changed her tone of voice and switched to the dominant
language of the center. She let the children open the flaps and interact with the moveable
elements. She pointed to the diver, fish, algae, sea turtle, and other details, labeled them,
or had the children name them. She repeated some of the words in Portuguese for Luisa,
the youngest child in the group who spoke Portuguese. Luisa pointed to a picture of
flippers and the educator explained its functions, making relevant arm movements, and con-
necting the item, as she always did, to children’s experiences. She then read the next sen-
tence, with little intonation. After a few seconds of her reading, the children looked away
and only faced her, once again, when she switched back to the dominant language of the
302 C. KIRSCH AND N. H. HORNBERGER

center. Using simple language, she engaged them in additional low-level questions and
labeling.

This educator typically asked children to listen to short and simple texts and invited
them to label objects, at times in different languages. She translated, switched
languages according to the child, asked closed questions, confirmed answers or cor-
rected, repeated, and added information, for instance about the function of an
object. Like other professionals in our sample, this educator made many connections
between the book and children’s experiences, possibly to create a meaningful, enjoy-
able, and child-centered activity. Like others, she also frequently paraphrased the text
to make it easier, based on her understanding that young children may not understand
everything. As a result, children rarely encountered longer stretches of written text and
tended to engage in short and low-level conversations that rarely touched on the
content of a story.
The development of biliteracy occurs in response to communicative demand, along
continua of language and literacy skills from reception to production, oral to written,
and L1 to L2. The notion of continuum is not meant to suggest development is necess-
arily continuous or gradual, however. It may in fact occur in fits and starts and with
some backtracking (Hornberger, 1989). Applying the continua of development to the
non-formal education sector in Luxembourg, means, firstly, that oral productions dom-
inate. Only a few educators, guided by their understanding of literacy as a cultural prac-
tice, involved children in writing labels or letters, thereby following the children’s lead.
Over the course of the academic year, these children took an interest in writing and
were observed on several occasions labeling letters, scribbling notes, or writing
down the recipe for pancakes after they had made the dish. By contrast, decontextua-
lised opportunities such as those requesting the daily identification of name cards did
not appear to further interest in writing (Kirsch & Kemp, 2024; Kirsch, under review).
Secondly, looking through the development lens highlights the use of more than
two languages in this example and in ECEC more generally. As noted earlier, many chil-
dren use one or more languages at home and these languages may differ from the
languages they encounter in ECEC (SNJ, 2023). Thus, speaking of L1 and L2 in a
context where several languages are used flexibly and fluidly may not make sense.
For this reason, we prefer to speak of Lx and Ly, whereby Lx refers to the language
(s) a child may use predominantly in the home context and Ly to the language(s) of
communication in ECEC.
Impressionistic rendering 3 illustrates the multilingual dialogue between the
educator and the child in this oral activity on the dimensions of the continua,
showing, for instance, that it afforded drawing on different points of the continua
reception to production and Lx to Ly. The educator and some children translanguaged,
using gestures as well as home and institutional languages in this multilingual
activity. The activity was highly contextualised to children’s experiences (content)
but children tended to disengage when the educator read more complex language
and longer text.
Impressionistic rendering 3. Overview of Example 3. Focus on Development
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 303

6.1. Ways of developing languages and literacies

What and how much children ‘produced’ language and literacy depended greatly on the
educators, and the educators’ practices, in turn, depended greatly on their own understand-
ing of children’s learning. In our observations and interviews, child-centered and teacher-
centered pedagogical approaches based on social constructivist, behaviourist, and matura-
tionist learning theories (Hall et al., 2023) influenced the meaning that ‘development’ took
on in the centers. The approach of educators in Example 1 was based on Vygotsky (1978)
who argued that children co-construct knowledge with more knowledgeable others who
carefully scaffold children’s learning in meaningful interactions. The educators developed
learning opportunities based on children’s interests, competences, and needs in line with
social constructivist learning theories and a social practice model of literacy. They aimed
to make each child ‘a valued and full member of the community’ (interview January
2021) and designed activities where children learned to participate in more complex
ways and take on increasing responsibility. The perspectives of the children were taken
seriously and paid attention to. For instance, when a three-year-old complained that he
did not understand the two-year-olds, the educator explained some basics of language
development and encouraged him to talk a lot with his younger peers to improve their
language skills. Communication was central to these educators. Literacy practices included
a variety of materials such as books, letter-shaped candles, signposts, or at times a mobile
304 C. KIRSCH AND N. H. HORNBERGER

phone, which they used to engage children in, at times translingual, conversations that had
the potential to develop language skills, general knowledge, alphabet knowledge, and pho-
nological awareness. For instance, the open and closed questions, including ‘why’ ques-
tions, encouraged children to participate, guess and share ideas.
While the Vygotskian educators had a systematic approach to developing
languages and literacy, this was not the case for the other eight educators.
Example 2 is representative of a teacher-centered group, whose practices unfolded
within a skills-based model, largely informed by behaviourism. Children tended to
listen out for specific words, memorise expressions, answer closed questions, and
identify the first letter of their name cards every day. They were not asked to think
and speak about a plot, connect stories to their own experiences, or negotiate
meaning. Given the repetitive nature of the activities whose level of difficulty did
not increase over the course of the year, children’s cognitive engagement remained
low, and we did not observe any development of children’s interests in print or par-
ticipation in literacy activities.
The same was true for a few educators who favoured a child-centered approach, such
as the one in Example 3. Consistent with the national framework (MENJE & SNJ, 2021) and
its call for child participation, emphasis on child autonomy, and focus on appropriate
materials and spatial organisation, these observed educators appeared to believe that
children learn naturally when they are ready and provided with opportunities that
afford learning. Reflecting this maturationist view (e.g. Gesell, 1940), they tended to let
children play on their own for extensive periods of time. Situations of sharing books or
reading stories were short although conversations were framed by children’s interests.
The national framework portrays children as competent actors on an equal footing
with adults, thereby leaving the role of the educator unclear. When engaging children
in activities, the educators seemed unaware of learning opportunities arising and, there-
fore, did not take them up. For instance, children frequently visited a ‘fairytale’ house
richly decorated with scenes from well-known tales, where they played hide-and-seek,
but no educator would engage children in conversations about the typical fairy tales or
books they had read. Together, these examples show how the educators’ understandings
of learning shape activities that promote biliteracy.

7. Conclusion
Multilingualism in ECEC in Europe has received relatively little research attention (Alstad &
Mourão, 2021) and, as such, our article on multilingual literacy practices addresses a gap
and contributes to the field. The application of the continua of biliteracy in heterogeneous
ECEC settings in Luxembourg has helped us analyze and understand the complexity of
the new multilingual program in ECEC in Luxembourg and highlight areas needing
more attention. In this final section, we will review the main reflections and conclude
with some implications for professional development, policymakers, and researchers.

7.1. Summary of reflections

The first set of continua, the continua of context, highlights the relevance of the micro–
macro dimensions to understand the diversity of practices. The national policy requires all
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 305

centers to promote multilingualism and all centers have some (emergent) multilingual
staff and children. Practices at the micro level, however, differ on account of each
center’s language profile and staff language competences. Analysis of the media and
content of biliteracy showed in Example 2 an activity centered around decontextualised
story reading in a locally minoritized language with an unfamiliar script, while Examples 1
and 3 depicted contextualised activities where educators and children translanguaged (to
varying degrees) across familiar languages and scripts and drew from across the conti-
nuum of majoritized and minoritized experiences. Finally, there are differences in relation
to the development of biliteracy. In Examples 1 and 3 but not 2, children used multiple
languages in mainly oral communications that asked them to use receptive and pro-
ductive skills simultaneously. In general, the early childhood educators in Luxembourg
as those elsewhere (Hall et al., 2023) focused little on literacy, particularly on writing, poss-
ibly on account of the aims of non-formal education, the vagueness of some of the
suggestions in the national framework, and the age of the children.
The comparison of the impressionistic renderings indicates that Example 1 offers chil-
dren the most opportunities to draw from across each and every continuum and, there-
fore, we argue, this event affords the most opportunities to develop language and
literacy. When practices were shaped by sociocultural approaches to language and lit-
eracy, like in Example 1, the educators appeared to draw on social constructivist learning
theories. By contrast, practices adopting technical and skills-based approaches went
together with behaviouristic understandings. The educators’ understandings shape
their practices and help explain uncertainties when planning language and literacy
activities (Hall et al., 2023; Repo et al., 2024).

7.2. Implications
Based on the continua and on our insights into the educators’ understandings of langua-
ging, literacy, and learning, we can make a few suggestions for practitioners, professional
development (PD) trainers, and policymakers. Firstly, the importance of the micro context
and the languages of interaction, highlighted by the continua of context, shows policy-
makers that one policy, for educators with heterogeneous backgrounds and diverse qua-
lifications in highly diverse centers, cannot fit everybody. More flexibility is needed
combined with more (continued) bottom-up work and professional development for edu-
cational change to gradually happen as shown in Finland (e.g., Repo et al., 2024). Such
training works when it is center-based because the team’s collective knowledge, skills,
and attitudes can be more relevant than educators’ individual beliefs (Lengyel & Salem,
2023). Several studies have confirmed that long-term and inquiry-based PD training in
and outside the centers can be effective in helping educators deepen their understanding
of learning, change their attitudes, improve skills, become more reflective, and decon-
struct and re-conceptualise their role as educators (e.g. Bergeron-Morin et al., 2023).
The continua are helpful in identifying specific training needs.
Second, our analysis of the practices along the continua of media and content indicates
the need to develop educators’ deeper understanding of multilingualism, of translangua-
ging and of the relationships between language, identity, and power. Implementing inno-
vative and inclusive ECEC policies requires educators to rethink their practices and
understandings of learning and teaching. In this way, they may become aware of
306 C. KIRSCH AND N. H. HORNBERGER

language ideologies or existing language hierarchies that they may inadvertently repro-
duce in their setting (Repo et al., 2024). Professional development training on trans-
languaging pedagogies has been shown to develop knowledge and understanding
and contribute to the creation of more inclusive learning environments (e.g. Kirsch
et al., 2020; Seltzer et al., 2020). Furthermore, given that the inclusion of children’s
home languages and translanguaging increase children’s participation and engagement
(Seltzer et al., 2020) and helps improve their language and literacy skills (Carrim & Nkomo,
2023), professional development on multilingualism and literacies may be necessary to
help practitioners embrace new practices. A survey of Australian ECEC professionals has
shown that those who reported being more confident and more knowledgeable about
language and literacy development were also more likely to engage children in literacy
practices (Weadman et al., 2022).
Third, based on the reflections relating to the continua of development, we argue that
educators could benefit from strategies or methods that facilitate sustained quality inter-
action in meaningful literacy activities. They could learn to implement dialogic reading
(Whitehurst & Lonigan, 1998) or approaches that emphasise multiliteracies and multimod-
ality and encourage children to draw on their entire semiotic repertoire (e.g. Cope &
Kalantzis, 2009; Cummins & Early, 2011). These approaches contribute to children’s
language and literacy development as well as to their sense of identity. In addition,
they help children make connections between the multilingual and multimodal practices
they experience in ECEC settings and their community (e.g. Kenner et al., 2004). Working
on translanguaging, dialogic reading, and multiliteracies (all in line with sociocultural per-
spectives on languages and literacy) in teams, potentially helps an increasing number of
professionals and centers shift ideologies and practices towards inclusive multilingual
education.
Finally, working with the continua had implications for us as researchers. The conti-
nua were originally developed at a particular time, in a particular space, and for particu-
lar reasons, and have evolved as they have been taken up in other times and spaces
across the world (Hornberger, 2022). In this article, we employed the heuristic to
analyze practices in ECEC in a multilingual country in Europe. As a result, we asked
new questions, offered reflections, and made suggestions. For instance, we recognised
that oral activities such as reading or telling stories can be conceptually literate activities;
we reflected on the use of L1 and L2 and suggested a broader alternative more inclusive
of multilingualism and a heteroglossic perspective; and we acknowledged that our
impressionistic renderings of the key moments observed depended on whose perspec-
tive one took. Researchers, educators, children, and policymakers see and value different
things and, therefore, dialogue is crucial to pave the way for change.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding
This work was supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund under Grant [C19/SC/
13552634], The Ministry of Education, Childhood and Youth and the National Youth Service
 LANGUAGE, CULTURE AND CURRICULUM 307

under the name [COMPARE]. We would like to thank the educators, children and parents and our
colleagues Valérie Kemp, Dr Džoen Bebić-Crestany, and Laura Colucci who collected the data.
Without them, this work would not have been possible.

Ethics
The research project has been approved by the Ethics Review Panel of the University of
Luxembourg under the reference ERP 19-050.

ORCID
Claudine Kirsch http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5981-2773
Nancy H. Hornberger http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4357-6424

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