“Here we speak Swedish” : A phenomenographic study of preschool teachers perceptions of working with multilingual children

The number of multilingual individuals is increasing in society and therefore places different demands on society. Preschools need to adapt, but the question is how the activities are able to accommodate multilingual children. This study will investigate this and aims to disseminate knowledge about preschool teachers´ different perceptions of working with multilingual children. To obtain a result, the study is based on a phenomenographic approach in which a variation of preschool teachers' perceptions is sought. Seven semi-structured interviews have been conducted with preschool teachers from seven different preschools. The result highlights five categories of perceptions that are mother tongue enriches all children in preschool, books as tools for stimulating native language, alternative communication in working with multilingual children, the importance of guardians in working with multilingual children and mother tongue spoken at home. These are placed on a scale from one end where the mother tongue enriches all the children at the preschool to the other end where the mother tongue is not seen as part of the preschool's responsibility but belongs to the home. The categories in between highlight an approach where multilingualism is worked on in the preschool but with the multilingual children. These five categories constitute the study's outcome space. Furthermore, the challenges and opportunities that are perceived to exist in the work with multilingualism are presented. This is presented through three aspects that recur in the answers, which are time, competence and tools. The preschool teachers´ express that there is not enough time to plan the work with multilingual children or to have time to work individually with them. Furthermore, it is described that they lack the competence to conduct work that caters to the multilingual children and that there are different views on visual support and digital resources.