Educators’ perspectives on early language facilitation with children aged birth to 2 years in early childhood education and care in Finland

The first two years of life are critical for later language learning and performance. With an increasing number of children participating in institutional early childhood education and care (ECEC), this has become an important language learning environment. ECEC educators play a key role in facilitating children’s language development and hence their views on the possibilities and constraints for facilitating young children’s language in ECEC are valuable. The study presented in this paper, explored educators’ views on aspects linked to early language facilitation in ECEC with children aged birth to two years. A large-scale semi-structured survey related to early language facilitation in ECEC was completed by 644 educators. Their open-ended responses were analysed using qualitative inductive content analysis. Factors constraining and facilitating language development in ECEC were extracted from the data and grouped into four categories: characteristics of educators as prerequisites for language facilitation; daily group practices in ECEC; ECEC service policy and resources; and ECEC in the context of wider societal and family services. While many existing well-functioning practices for early language facilitation were noted, challenges were also reported. In addition to employing skilled staff, educators saw it as important to organise practices and daily routines in ways that support language facilitation. They also emphasised that setting lower educator-child ratios and taking children’s skills and age into account when forming groups would create more frequent language-facilitation situations involving educator-child reciprocal communications. Overall, the educators perceived ECEC as a low-threshold service for early language intervention. They considered language facilitation for young children to be essential and to require multi-professional cooperation and resources.