MEDIAL – Multilingual Dialogic Reading
To more effectively support the conditions necessary for multilingual children to learn to read, an existing professional development program (training series) for educators in dialogic reading—which has already been positively evaluated (Böse et al., 2023) is being expanded to include three key components and optimized in collaboration with practitioners: 1) involvement of parents/guardians, 2) promotion of multilingualism, and 3) use of digital media. Caregivers will receive a training series on multilingual dialogic reading at home to intensify support for the child’s native language in particular. Early childhood educators will incorporate dialogic reading into their work at the daycare center.
Multilingual materials are designed to support language development in all of a child’s languages, both in print (picture books available in different language versions) and digitally (a multilingual read-aloud feature for the same picture books). In the professional development series, we explore how professionals and caregivers can implement language support through dialogic reading, value the family language(s) as well as German as the language of the environment, and support the dual linguistic identity of multilingual children. To assess effectiveness, a clustered randomized controlled trial is planned for 2026–2029, in which we will follow multilingual children and their caregivers for approximately 1.5 years, from the beginning of their final year of preschool (prerequisites for learning to read) through the end of the first semester of elementary school (learning to read).
Interested daycare centers or parents of multilingual children are welcome to contact us at jannika.boese@tu-dortmund.de. We look forward to collaborating with many daycare centers and elementary schools in the region!
The Project Team
