Young Children Living and Learning in a Super Diverse City

The Early Childhood Research Centre in collaboration with iHuman held a seminar on the 29th of January. The focus of the seminar was to present our recent research and to ask critical questions about superdiversity in relation to children’s communicative practices, their home-based engagement with digital technologies, and the implications for curriculum in the Early Years Foundation Stage. It was great to see so many colleagues and students attending despite the snow. Our distance-learning students were able to join us via the Blackboard Collaborate webinar, which Dr Louise Kay moderated.

Dr Sabine Little began the seminar with a thought provoking discussion about her recent research into multilingual parenting in the digital age. Following this Dr Liz Chesworth, Dr Aderonke Folorunsho and Professor Elizabeth Wood talked about their research funded by the Froebel Trust to highlight the dissonance between children’s everyday knowledge and curriculum requirements in a diverse nursery setting. Finally, Christina Fashanu shared her doctoral research funded by the ESRC to identify some unintended consequences of formalising Early Years Education in England for superdiversity and multilingual practices.

The presentations stimulated some great discussions and we appreciated the challenging questions posed by the audience. These discussions highlighted the dilemmas faced by multilingual parents regarding the use of heritage language in family life. Another issue that caught the audience’s interest was the policy context for early childhood education and its implications for young learners in diverse communities. The seminar provided much food for thought and will inform current and future agendas within the Early Childhood Research Centre.

Dr Aderonke Folorunsho