21st Century Pre-school Bilingual Education

Mila Schwartz is Associate Professor in Language and Education and a Head of Language Program (MA) in Oranim Academic College of Education, Israel. Her research interests include studying language policy and models of early bilingual education; language, cognitive, and socio-cultural development of early sequential bilinguals; family language policy; and bilingual teachers' pedagogical development. Åsa Palviainen is a full Professor in Swedish at Department of Languages at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Her research covers a wide range of topics including language policy issues and discourses (especially on the status of Swedish in the Finnish educational system and on bilingualism), discourse analytical and sociolinguistic approaches to early bi- and multilingualism, language policies and practices in early childhood education, family language policy research, and innovative L2 teaching and learning.

• Introduction- Twenty-first-century preschool bilingual education: facing advantages and challenges in cross-cultural contexts 1. Two languages in the air: a cross-cultural comparison of preschool teachers’ reflections on their flexible bilingual practices 2. Adult monolingual policy becomes children’s bilingual practice: code-alternation among children and staff in an English-medium preschool in Sweden 3. The early childhood education and care partnership for bilingualism in minority language schooling: collaboration between bilingual families and pedagogical practitioners 4. ‘Why do we know Hebrew and they do not know Arabic?’ Children’s meta-linguistic talk in bilingual preschool 5. Nurturing bilingual learners: challenges and concerns in Singapore 6. First-language skills of bilingual Turkish immigrant children growing up in a Dutch submersion context