ABSTRACT
In this study, multilingual children’s expressions of participation in preschool are explored, with special focus on the use of digital tablets to include the children’s mother tongues and national minority languages. Video observations of children’s interactions with tablets as well as focus groups with preschool teachers were analyzed using a social semiotic approach in combination with the notion of translanguaging. Three aspects of children’s agency were found, and the emerging affordances of the digital tablets are interwoven with the multilingual children’s different expressions of participation. Being able to hear and use one’s mother tongue or minority language and experience that it is valuable in a social context is one facet of agency and was made possible by the use of digital tablets with ready-made language applications. A second aspect was when children could create their own content using their mother tongue or minority language, in open-ended applications. Being able to choose, create, and manipulate their own content non-verbally, regardless of spoken language, proves to be a third way of expressing participation. The importance of the design of the digital resources is discussed, and the possibilities of multimodal translanguaging practices are highlighted.
