”Guided participation and communicationpractices in multilingual toddler groups”.

The purpose of this study is to examine how organisation and structure of everyday preschool activities impact the possibility of multilingual children to learn and use Swedish. Focus is on toddlers, i.e. children aged between 1 and 3 years. The study has two specific research questions: 1) What characterises the activities in toddler groups in which children communicatively participate? 2) What characterises teachers' guiding of these children's participation in the activities?

The study shows that the activities provide the children with different possibilities to learn language and communicate, and that the activities differ with regard to group size and the teachers' degree of guidance, for example. The article shows three examples of how communication between children as well as between children and adults can take place, and all three examples contribute to developing the language of multilingual children.

The first example is an activity in a larger group of children with a relatively high degree of teacher guidance. The activity enables the children to develop their knowledge about Swedish words and concepts. The teachers ask the children questions about concepts and explain these concepts in a context with clear structure (organised around a song and the lyrics of the song). Both verbal and non-verbal resources (such as gestures and movements) are used to communicate, and according to the authors this indicates that this is important with regard to including children with different language skills, experience and knowledge in group activities.

The second example shows communication in a smaller group of children in connection with a meal situation. In this situation, the teacher is less guiding, but still attentive. The organisation of the meal situation, i.e. the fact that children and teachers eat together, allow the teachers to guide the children's communication by asking questions while the children are communicating with one another. The teacher's questions create an opportunity for the teacher to introduce the children to new concepts.

The third example shows activity and communication between the children without the teachers. The situation shows three children with Bosnian as their native language talking together in a mixture between Bosnian and Swedish. They use a Swedish song from the preschool as a common resource in their communication. This type of activity and communication does not introduce new words and concepts.

All three examples show how different everyday activities contribute to developing the language of multilingual children. The examples also show that different activities contribute in different ways, but that joint activities such as singing, mealtimes and play are crucial for learning.

The study is based on data from video footage in eight preschools; six with children aged between 1 and 3 years and two with children aged between 1 and 5 years. The children spoke other languages at home than Swedish, for example Bosnian, Bulgarian, English, Finnish, Kurdish, Persian and German. The results of this article are based on observations from three preschools. The article is based on observations of three specific children in order to illustrate three different situations that comprise communication and thereby a learning potential. The video footage shows what the authors call communicative activities, in which the children participate verbally in interaction with their peers and teachers. The three types of activity with the three selected children presented in this article comprise a situation in which a large group of children are being guided by a teacher, a situation with a small group of children and a teacher, and finally, a situation in which three children are communicating without a teacher present. The authors use a socio-cultural perspective to elucidate the interaction and communication between children as well as between children and adults.

Kultti A., & Samuelsson, I. P. (2014). ”Guided participation and communication practices in multilingual toddler groups”. I: Harrison, L. J., & Sumsion, J. Lived Spaces of Infant-Toddler Education and Care – Exploring Diverse Perspectives on Theory, Research and Practice, Springer: Dordrecht.