JultikaUniversity of Oulu repository

Linguistic diversity of the student population has been identified as one of the urgent challenges that educators of the 21st century need to respond to. As classrooms become linguistically and culturally richer, there is an evident need for increasing teacher awareness on the issues of multiculturalism and linguistic diversity. Being brought-up in a multilingual environment inevitably impacts a child’s linguistic, cognitive and socio-cultural development. Educators need to better understand the unique developmental trajectory of multilingual children to be able to leverage their strengths for academic success. This study investigates the effects of early multilingualism on different aspects of child development and examines the implications these effects have for primary education settings. A list of recommendations has been summarized towards providing higher quality and more equitable education for the linguistically diverse children. Fostering equity education for multilingual children is a step further towards our global mission of educating the full range of children to become citizens not only of their linguistic and cultural groups, but of the world at large.