Then I tried to go deep into the website Foundation for Child Development (FCD), whose mission is to make full use of research to ensure that "all children benefit from early learning experiences that affirm their individual, family, and community assets, fortify them against harmful consequences arising from economic instability and social exclusion, and that strengthen their developmental potential”. (FCD, 2010)
I did not receive any e-newsletter so far. Then I searched the resources on this site and found an article Multilingual Children: Beyond Myths and Toward Best Practices, which shows how to best support multilingual children’s learning and development and to some extent indicates how to eliminate inequity in multilingual children accessing to quality preschool programs. This policy is framed by four questions which I think we as educators should consider about:
- What are the broad social and historical contexts of multilingual learners in the U.S.?
- What are the demographic characteristics of a multilingual family?
- Which basic language developmental processes and strategies for promoting multilingual children’s language can be applied to multilingual children?
- What home, education, and community contexts support learning multiple languages?
Here I would like to share some key strategies from this policy about what caregivers and teachers can do to ensure children develop strong multiple skills.
Ensure that children in multilingual con- texts have long-term and enriched ex- posure to, and opportunity to use, both languages in a variety of contexts.
Create an environment in which each language the child is learning to speak is supported; support the minority language (L1) in the child care environment.
Support L1 as much as possible by, for example, visits to areas where L1 is the dominant language spoken, as children may begin to prefer the majority language.
Speak to children in the language that comes most naturally to the caregiver, resulting in a richer and more diverse language environment.
Develop and/or identify programs that expose children to high-quality input in L2 at early ages.
Do not ascribe perceived language delays to multilingualism. (FCD, 2014)
Go back to the website that I selected at the beginning of this course, National Institute for Early Education Research/NIEER (http://nieer.org/), I searched some resources and found that there are some related to excellence and equity in early care and education. An article, Expanding Access to Quality Pre-K is Sound Public Policy, written by W. Steven Barnett in 2013, stated the necessity of expanding access to quality Pre-K and advocate for children in low-income families. In this article, the author points out what good Pre-K means, “Pre-K prepares children to start off well. It does not guarantee that nothing later on will interfere with their progress. We should not conclude from this that pre-K does not matter. Schools spend a lot of time and money helping children who are behind catch up at least part way, and reducing the need for this spending is part of what good pre-K is all about.” (Barnett, 2013, p.4) They emphasize "raising standards and putting in place continuous improvement and accountability systems to ensure the new programs deliver strong results”. (Barnett, 2013, p.5) The author suggests that policies be invested to enable all children, especially those in low-income families to access to quality Pre-K.
Reference:
Foundation for Child Development. (2010). About Us. Retrieved August 9th, 2014 from http://fcd-us.org/about-us.
Foundation for Child Development. (2014). Multilingual Children: Beyond Myths and Toward Best Practices. Retrieved from http://fcd-us.org/sites/default/files/Multilingual%20Children%20Beyond%20Myths%20and%20Towards%20Best%20Practices.pdf
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