Doctoral defense in education science: Fríða Bjarney Jónsdóttir
Aðalbygging
Aula in the main building of the University of Iceland
Fríða Bjarney Jónsdóttir defends her PhD thesis in Educational Sciences from the Faculty of Education and Pedagogy, University of Iceland.
The oral defence takes place Friday, September 22, at 1:00 pm in the Aula in the main building of the University of Iceland, as well as in live stream.
Dissertation title: Giving Wings to Voices: Preschool as an Inclusive Learning Space for Communication and Understanding.
Opponents: Dr. Christina Hedman and dr. Piet Van
Avermaet.
Main supervisor: Dr. Hanna Ragnarsdóttir Professor at the School of Education, University of Iceland.
Co-supervisor: Dr. Lars Anders Kulbrandstad Professor emeritus at Inland Norway University of
Applied Sciences, Norway.
Expert in the Doctoral Committee was dr. Jóhanna Einarsdóttir Professor at the School of Education, University of Iceland and Jim Cummins Professor
emeritus at the University in Toronto, Canada.
About the project:
The doctoral study is based on a qualitative study conducted in one preschool over the period of one year. The objective was to gain a deeper understanding of how preschool can serve as an inclusive and socially just learning space for multilingual children's language and emergent literacy development, where voices and identities are affirmed and partnership with parents is enhanced. The study is concerned with a comprehensive view of the complex reciprocity of linguistic, contextual, social, and cultural factors affecting multilingual children’s learning and development, highlighting successful practices.
Findings illustrate that the development of learning spaces for multilingual children at the preschool was a longtime process that was continuously being reshaped with the overall aim to change practices to address the growing diversity. Through professional development and a learning community of teachers, multicultural practices were implemented and reflected on. The teachers showed great respect for diversity and they created such culture of communication in which they considered it to be their role to reach out to children and parents. The read thread in the daily preschool work, during organised and free activities, was the teachers’ support of language and literacy learning, and vocabulary in the school language. Furthermore, preschool teachers supported diverse home languages of children in multiple ways, they used practices that encouraged reading and literacy, and they considered collaboration with parents to be essential for creating successful learning spaces for multilingual children.
Even though the findings provide an overview of the successful practices, teachers and the principal faced multiple challenges. Those involved lack of educated teachers, deficit discourse and prejudice among some teachers, lack of appropriate assessment tools, and lack of time to build on those. Sustaining and systematically implementing successful practices into the preschool's routine was also a challenge.
The findings illustrate the importance of building on children’s linguistic and cultural diversity while developing partnerships with parents. Furthermore, the study demonstrates the role of teachers in creating the conditions for language learning through daily activities, both initiated by the children and organized by the teachers. Drawing on the findings and perspectives from theory and prior research I present suggestions related to professional development of in-service preschool teachers, education of pre-service teachers, further research, policy-making, and preschool practices. As such the study contributes to the important objective of reversing the marginalisation that has been dominant in the deficit discourse and in the education of multilingual children in Iceland and abroad.
About the doctoral candidate
Fríða Bjarney Jónsdóttir is a preschool teacher and she completed her master's degree in educational studies with a focus on multiculturalism from the University of Iceland's School of Education in 2011. She worked in preschool Lækjaborg for 12 years and for the last years she led the development project "Lækjaborg Multicultural Preschool". After that she became a preschool consultant and in the year 2008, she accepted the position of the project manager of multiculturalism in Reykjavík preschools. She has participated in policymaking within the field of education for multilingual children, both within the city and on the national level, created study materials and handbooks for multicultural preschool practices, and provided professional development. Since 2018, Fríða has been the director of the Centre of Innovation in Education at Reykjavík’s Department of Education and Youth. She has worked on her doctoral studies intermittently since 2014, participated in international and national research, and has been a guest teacher at the School of Education. Fríða Bjarney is married to Jón Karl Helgason, a professor of Icelandic as a second language at the University of Iceland. They have three children, Marteinn Sindri, Katrín Helena, and Valgerður Birna.
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