Promotion of Migrant Children's Epistemic Status and Authority in Early School Life

Migrant children may display problems of participation in school interactions with adults and peers, depending on their difficulties in speaking the host country’s language and understanding its culture. This condition amplifies the general view of children as incompetent in producing and acting knowledge. This paper analyses video-recorded interactions in kindergartens in Reggio Emilia (Italy), involving migrant children, teachers and Italian children. These schools are famous worldwide for their methodology, based on treating children as competent agents . I focus on the participants’ actions constructing conversational sequences and on the systems these interactional sequences contribute to construct. The analysis highlights that migrant children are given recognition as competent agents, and that their status and authority is promoted in producing and acting knowledge. Recognition and promotion of migrant children’s agency, status and authority are based on forms of facilitation, coordination and negotiation , enhanced by initiatives taken by teachers and Italian children. These initiatives give particular relevance to: a. migrant children’s personal expressions and display of competent agency, and b. their linguistic and cultural difficulties. Initiatives combining these two aspects promote the social construction of a form of hybrid identity, both personal and cultural, which is constructed and appraised in the interaction.