Enhancing children’s early language and emergent literacy in a Greek pre-kindergarten heritage language classroom through a translingual and transcultural stance

Situated at the intersection of the emergent field of early heritage language education and pedagogy, this paper reports on a participatory action research project at a pre-kindergarten classroom in a Greek community school in Switzerland. Adopting a translingual and transcultural orientation to language and language learning, it scrutinizes the multilingual, multimodal, and multisensorial resources the children draw upon in their creative text-making and talk about texts and interrogates how these early language and emergent literacy practices open a space for children to articulate their agentive voices. It demonstrates that while emphasising Greek language learning, their other languages and lived experiences are listened to and honoured.