Growing Educators’ Practices with Multilingual Learners
To better support how teachers work with multilingual learners, we have found that a shift is needed: Professional development should foster collaborative, practice-based learning experiences that help teachers understand, apply, and reflect on their instructional decisions. By building on teachers’ strengths, fostering reflective dialogue, and embedding support within daily instruction, we can cultivate meaningful and lasting changes in the instruction of multilingual preschool-age children.
To get started, we encourage administrators to reflect on the following:
› How can you encourage teachers to practice strategies such as conversational mapping, expanding and recasting, and open-ended questions to support multilingual learners?
› Which language development strategies are currently used in your setting, and how could a collaborative learning community help educators build on those strengths?
› What support would the teachers in your setting need to make one change in their classrooms to better support multilingual learners’ linguistic, social, and academic development?
About the Authors
Iliana Alanís, PhD, is a professor of early childhood and elementary education at the University of Texas at San Antonio. iliana. alanis @ utsa. edu
Irasema Salinas-González, EdD, is an associate professor of early care and early childhood studies at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley. irasema. gonzalez @ utrgv. edu
NAEYC Accreditation
This article supports the following NAEYC Early Learning Programs standards and topics.
Standard 3: Curriculum
Planning and Implementing an Engaging Curriculum to Meet Meaningful Goals
Standard 4: Teaching
Teaching to Enhance Each Child’ s Development and Learning
Photographs: © Getty Images. Copyright © 2026 by the National Association for the Education of Young Children. See permissions and reprints online at NAEYC. org / resources / permissions.
› How can language development strategies benefit all children in your setting?
FURTHER RESOURCES
Fall 2026 Educating Young Children 57