ABSTRACT
This Special Issue focuses on early years’ education settings which offer total or partial immersion education to children aged between about two and six years, and thus it explores an area of bilingual education that has grown significantly, both in popularity among parents and in research interest in recent years. Immersion education shows wide variation with regard to the policies, programmes and implementation practices found throughout the world, reflecting the different needs of multilingual countries, as well as provision for migrant groups (Tedick, Christian, and Fortune 2011; Baker 2011; García 2009). Similar levels of variety are evident in immersion in the early years: in different countries these settings can range from day-care settings to preschool to kindergarten provision, showing significant differences in terms of their philosophical approach to early years’ education and to the type and intensity of immersion implemented. What
they share is that they offer preschool children a model of care and early education that brings with it a particular focus on language maintenance and/or enrichment.
