Purpose
The article explores the role of touch in a multilingual kindergarten and its importance for ‘translanguaging’, a perspective on communication and education in multilingual settings. The main objective is to investigate how touch contributes to children’s communication and meaning-making in a multilingual context, and how it can be used educationally.
Result
The study shows that touch plays an important role in creating a common foundation of experience in a multilingual kindergarten, where children and adults can communicate and learn together across linguistic differences. In addition, it shows that touch can serve as a gateway to the exploration of cultural variety. The study does not provide answers as to whether cultural differences in perceptions of touch exist or how teachers can address such differences.
Design
The data collection took place over a period of seven weeks and focused on a department with 9 two-year-olds in a kindergarten in a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden, characterised as ‘superdiverse’ due to its linguistic and cultural complexity. Video recordings and field notes were used. Five of the children in the material are highlighted in examples in the analysis.
References
Samuelsson, R. (2022). Touch and translanguaging in a multilingual early childhood education setting. Multimodality & Society, 2(3), 300–322.