Page 327 - Pedagoška vizija / A Pedagogical Vision

Future Preschool Teachers’ Perspectives on Integrating Multicultural and Multilingual Content

foreign languages. The development of plurilingual and pluricultural com-
petencies, as well as linguistic and cultural awareness, is encouraged from
an early age, with the Slovenian Kindergarten Curriculum (Ministrstvo za šol-
stvo in šport 1999) and its supplement (Strokovni svet Republike Slovenije za
splošno izobraževanje 2002) also focusing on the integration of multilingual-
ism and multiculturalism in the preschool educational context. Therefore, it
is important to foster positive attitudes towards linguistic and cultural diver-
sity among preschool teachers, as this can play a crucial role in developing
linguistic and cultural awareness in preschool children. For this reason, we
carriedout astudyto investigatepre-servicepreschoolteachers’perceptions
of and attitudes towards integrating multilingual and multicultural content
in kindergarten activities.

Linguistic and Cultural Diversity
Many authors (Candelier 2004; Finkbeiner and White 2017; Karras 2021; Bra-
tož and Sila 2022b) acknowledge the importance of encouraging linguistic
and cultural awareness in young learners, as these play a significant role
in the development of plurilingual competencies (Svalberg 2007; Cots 2017;
Finkbeiner and White 2017). One of the milestones in promoting language
awareness was the Janua Linguarum initiative (Candelier 2004), which devel-
oped ‘awakening to languages,’ a pluralistic approach to languages and cul-
tures that was implemented in ten European countries, including Slovenia
(Fidler 2006), with the aim to encourage integrated teaching and learning
of multiple languages and the recognition of linguistic diversity. Accord-
ing to Sayers and Láncos (2017), the promotion of linguistic diversity within
pluralistic approaches leads to the development of positive attitudes to-
wards different language varieties and fosters multilingualism and language
awareness.
Another pluralistic approach, the DivCon model, aimed at raising aware-
ness of linguistic and cultural diversity among preschool children, was devel-
oped in Slovenia (Bratož and Sila 2022b). The approach emphasises the im-
portance of providing context for developing linguistic and cultural aware-
ness and will be described in more detail in the following chapter. Pluralistic
approaches also help children develop positive attitudes towards other lan-
guages and cultures, which has been determined by many authors (Dörnyei,
Csizér, and Németh 2006; Žefran 2015; Bratož, Štemberger, and Pirih 2022) as
a crucial prerequisite in language learning and developing plurilingual and
pluricultural competences. We believe that the best results can be achieved
by beginning the endeavours to promote positive attitudes towards linguis-

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