Chapter 2: Creating Shared Learning Spaces: An Intercultural, Multilingual Early Learning Program for Preschool Children from Refugee Families

The chapter describes an intercultural, multilingual early learning program that is genuinely responsive to the early learning needs of preschool children and their parents from three ethnocultural refugee communities. By recognizing parents and children as having a wealth of knowledges, the program challenged the deficit frameworks that defined these refugees as lacking in social and cultural capital. Based on the sociocultural-historical theory of learning (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1991, 1998), the knowledge-making processes of these cultural and linguistic groups were central to understanding the diverse forms of learning and teaching occurring in this community-initiated, government-funded program. Consistent with Participatory Learning and Action methodology, data were co-constructed and generated collectively during all phases of the process. Unique features of the program include the simultaneous use of four languages in the classroom, each taught by a first-language facilitator with English as the common language; the process of weekly negotiations in planning the emerging curriculum; and parent and community involvement in setting the program’s goals in designing culturally relevant curriculum and in evaluating the children’s learning. These features are discussed and interpreted using minority rights frameworks.