“Language-Rich Interactions In The Preschool” – Professional development guide for preschool teachers and school leaders

Preschool teachers and their school leaders play a pivotal role in addressing many of the barriers to learning, including those experienced by ethnic minority children, and by doing so, increasing their levels of involvement and wellbeing in their classrooms and school environments. Ethnic minority children can experience these barriers in the physical environment, materials, activities and interactions, experience the differences between home and school culture. By developing teachers’ and school leaders’ competences to value ethnic diversity and use it to the children’s advantage in the classroom, teachers can take significant steps forward in ensuring that all children are developing to their full potential.

This guide is useful to all teachers, helping them to better understand children’s language development, both those teaching in monolingual as well as multilingual classrooms. With this guide, teachers will be able to take the first steps to create more language-rich interactions in their classrooms while valuing and using their language and cultural background, aligning with the child-centered approach and learning through play. By doing so, this guide complements guidance by the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) and DOET on “Strengthening Vietnamese for children from ethnic minorities in Vietnam period 2016-2020, towards 2025” as well as the intentions of the new Early Childhood Education curriculum which gives more space to teachers and schools leaders to design and adapt the implementation of the curriculum to address the learning needs of the children and encourages teachers to increasingly use the local context in their classrooms.