COLLABORATION WITH PARENTS IN BILINGUAL ACQUISITION

Abstract

Parents of bilingual children are the main agents of the early development of their languages during the first socialization, while day care and school catch up during the second socialization. Parents want to have an expert advice from the pedagogical staff and try to influence and control the process of language acquisition. The article deals with parents’ attitudes and the ways to make adults in child’s surroundings collaborate with each other. It demonstrates the international and the Finnish experience of partnerships between home, kindergarten and school in multilingual settings and its results for the balanced use of languages. The study shows how the Finnish-Russian parents understand their goals concerning the wellbeing of children and what they are ready to invest in interactions with the educational institutions.

Keywords

• bilingual education
• bilingual children
• Finnish-Russian bilingualism
• parents’ attitudes
• collaboration/partnership between home
• day care and school