Addressing future challenges in early language learning and multilingual education

Resumen

The experiences of recent years have tested all public sectors, and society has faced challenges we would not have foreseen. This has transformed our society into one that is more global, resilient and sustainable, and where education emerges as a bastion to sustain the welfare state (International Commision on the Futures of Education, 2020). Multilingualism is, on the other hand, one of the most relevant characteristics of this new society, given the frequent migratory flows and work mobility (American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2019; Eurostat, June 2022). Being in contact with several languages, even for monolinguals, is a daily activity. The merging of these two fields makes multilingual education a necessary and timely area of study. Within multilingual education the focus on early years seems more cutting-edge: firstly, because it is at this stages that the foundations for the child’s future career are laid (Council of Europe, 2019); and secondly, because more and more children are multilingual, either by dealing directly with multilingualism at home or in the society where they live, or because they are introduced to different languages at school contexts since early years (Schwartz, 2022). Unfortunately, research on this area is scarce, and more data and experiences are to be shared among the scientific community so as to deal with the challenges educators, families, policymakers and researchers face. The aim of this book is to approach early language learning and multilingual education from different perspectives, understanding it from a broad and inclusive perspective, encompassing all kinds of sociolinguistic varieties. In doing so, the book covers multilingual education both in social and educational contexts for children from 0 up to Primary Education (10-12 years old). It contains 45 chapters, mainly in English and some of them in Spanish, organised in five different sections.