Preserving linguistic roots in daycare facilities

The involved researchers from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (KU) and the Heidelberg University of Education have closed a research gap with their study. Until now, there has been little longitudinal data regarding the language development of children growing up in multilingual environments, both nationally and internationally. In particular, there have been few studies to date that take into account the course of development in the respective language of origin and consider the development of the surrounding language and language of origin together. The project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

"The results of our long-term study show that the intensive inclusion of multilingualism in the daily routine of a daycare center has no negative effects on the children's development of German as the language of the environment. Contrary to this fear on the part of professionals and parents, the experience gained suggests instead that a conscious and well-founded approach to children's multilingualism in everyday life can lead to more and higher quality language interactions between children and between professionals and children", explains Prof. Dr. Jens Kaiser-Kratzmann. He holds the Professorship of Education with a focus on Early Childhood at the KU and collaborated on the project with Prof. Dr. Steffi Sachse (Professorship of Developmental Psychology with a focus on Language Development at the Heidelberg University of Education).