Walking through kindergarten semiotic landscapes with multilingual children: A way to explore participation and engagement
Peer reviewed, Journal article
Published version
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3120544Utgivelsesdato
2024Metadata
Vis full innførselSamlinger
Originalversjon
Varhaiskasvatuksen Tiedelehti. 2024, 13 (1), 173-195. https://doi.org/10.58955/jecer.129353Sammendrag
Practitioners in Norwegian kindergartens are responsible for actively
promoting and developing multilingual children’s language skills (Directorate for
Education and Training, 2017). Children’s multilingual language skills develop
through participation and engagement. The aim of this paper is to explore how the
semiotic landscape encourages interaction and dialogue among children. Semiotic
landscapes are public spaces with visible inscriptions made through deliberate
human intervention and meaning making (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010). Utilizing
walking interviews as a method, we explored multilingual children’s perspectives on
their semiotic environment. Analyzing the interviews through the concept of agency
(Duran, 2015), we found dialogues marked by engagement on different levels. We
discuss the difference between predictability and unpredictability in semiotic
resources and found that the latter leads to stronger engagement and longer
dialogues than instructional materials with high level of predictability.