Study background
The target city is situated in the northern area of Israel. Most of its residents are immigrants from all over the world. The linguistic and cultural diversity of the city poses many challenges in managing preschool education, due to lack of clearly declared early language education policy and planning, lack of professional knowledge and skills in approaching this diversity, and a relatively slow progress of children's competence in the societally dominant language, Hebrew.
Over the last years, the failure of preschool education to meet the needs of the highly heterogeneous preschool population urged local early-years educationalists, policymakers and parents address the challenges more effectively. One of the main questions raised is: What is the place of home languages and cultural funds of knowledge in a preschool classroom?
As a first step towards the development of early language education policy, local policymakers initiated a forum, a 'language leading team,' aimed to influence their own work. The forum's meetings focused on changes in policymakers' attitudes towards LCD in the classrooms and planning actions aimed to empower LCD children and their families.
Method
This study was implemented as a case‐study, using purposeful sampling. In addition, it was also ethnography-oriented research since we conducted classroom observations with focus on language policy documents, photographs of classroom language landscape, and language resources provided by the policymakers.
The main data consisted of video‐taped zoom focused group discussions and seven individual interviews in which heads of the early childhood education municipal department and the Ministry of Education department reflected on histories of their collective agency, beliefs and practices, individual experience, personal professional and life knowledge, and the most critical events in the 'language leading team' in the years 2020-2021.
Results
Our analysis revealed the following characteristics of collective agency: (1) planning changes in language education policy in the city's preschools by creating a community of practice; (2) high level of commitment to preschool pedagogical staffs and families; (3) critical reflections on gained experience and rethinking attitudes towards LCD in the classrooms; (4) practical steps in approaching linguistically and culturally responsive teaching; and (5) future visions and long-term expectations from engagement in times of change.
We found that education policy makers' transformative thinking drew largely on change emerging from their own life experiences, and awareness of past mistakes.
The participants manifested their agency also in reporting on proactive actions, in line with changes in their attitudes. These actions encompass recruiting forces from the academy, engaging social mediators, preparing for welcoming new coming LCD families, creating language mediating resources for teaching staff such as multilingual vocabularies and games to improve their communication with LCD families.
Conclusions
This study proposes an agency-centered approach as a means of understanding and promoting educational change. Bottom-up language education policy initiatives can be instrumental in achieving changes in educational beliefs and practices. Collective agency of policy makers is manifested in their belief in their self-efficacy in supporting teachers facing LCD in preschool classrooms.
