Home learning environments

Chapter 7: Family Learning in Many Languages

Chapter Overview

This chapter will focus on how issues of language inequality and exclusion can lead to misidentification of families as ‘hard to reach’ or ‘not interested’. Here we consider how settings use different approaches to tackling language discriminations, and develop their own understandings of languages and learning.


Chapter Objectives

  • To consider multilingualism in early years settings;

  • To focus on interventions which embrace all the languages families use;

  • To consider how ORIM can be used in multilingual early years settings and how parents

Further reading

Clare, A. (2016) Communication and Interaction in the Early Years London: Sage

Focussing on children birth to five, with a chapter on bilingualism and young children.


Neaum, S. (2021) What comes before phonics? (2/e) London: Sage

This book addresses processes in the early stages of reading, addressing concern about formalised teaching of phonics too early. It also addresses aspects of bilingualism in learning to read.


National Literacy Trust (2017) Supporting other languages in the early years. https://cdn.literacytrust.org.uk/media/documents/2017_07_10_free_ELY_resource_-_supporting_other_languages_in_the_early_years.pdf

Part of a set of resources for supporting young bilingual children in early years settings.