AGENTIVE – Advancing teacher education at universities towards open and cross-sectoral early childhood multilingualism

The number of countries or regions that implement European policies on early language learning or multilingualism in early childhood education (ECE) is increasing and teachers try to find effective methods to teach languages to young children. Language education in ECE means different things in different countries. While teachers in Switzerland and Slovenia introduce children to early English and other “foreign languages”, some schools in Italy teach German, and teachers in Luxembourg familiarize children with French. Currently, many teachers are unsure of how to teach languages and design literacy activities. Literacy plays a central role as it develops language skills as well as pre-literacy skills that are predictors of students’ later literacy performance and their general attainment. Nonetheless, research findings and evidence-based guidelines are rare. Additionally, there is a dearth of digital materials despite the focus on digitalization in many countries. The project AGENTIVE brings together children, parents, teachers, teacher educators, and business partners from 6 countries. The researchers from the universities of Luxembourg, Italy, Slovenia, and the PHGR from Switzerland will collaborate with classroom teachers to develop innovative materials and methodological guides on evidence-based teaching of multiple languages in literacy activities. The teams from the University of Münster and Web2Learn digitalize the literacy materials and create an open platform to make the materials available to ECE teachers as well as parents. Several universities will analyze student teachers’ understanding of early literacy teaching in of multiple languages and assess their needs. This knowledge, in turn, helps lecturers prepare students more effectively for their future job. All partners promote the digitalized materials and methods in professional development courses and contribute to the effective ways of their use in training courses. In this way, they also help upskill teachers, teacher educators, and content developers of training courses.