Abstract:

International scientific evidence shows that the first years of children's life form the basis of their development throughout life. Therefore, educational and care services dedicated to childhood are of utmost importance to support their growth, increase educational opportunities and activate sustainable and inclusive processes that involve both the personal and social level (Bondioli, 2017; C. E., 2014, Hall et Alii, 2014).

In order to encourage participation, strengthen social inclusion and embrace diversity, services must be able to cultivate and respect the identities of children, supporting the sense of belonging to the communities in which they live, also by enhancing their native language and culture, as underlined by the European documents and the most recent research on the subject (Guerin, 2014; Silva, 2016).

The right to protect the native language and the consequent attention to linguistic needs are, in fact, essential for the construction of a solid relational, emotional and cognitive competence and a conscious and critical expressive ability. Furthermore, the native language involves the most intimate dimensions of everyone and deeply permeates the process of identity construction (De Mauro, 1992). In this respect, it becomes strategic to support multilingualism and socially enhance and promote the different languages with which a child is in contact from early childhood, counteracting the false belief that this constitutes an obstacle to learning and can be a cause of delays in linguistic acquisitions and personality disorders (Baum, Titone, 2014). On the contrary, research shows that even in atypical contexts and in the presence of complex communication needs, in no case can multilingualism worsen the existing difficulties and that the advantages typically associated with bilingualism can also be extended to those with specific difficulties, sometimes with even more satisfactory outcomes (Garaffa, Sorace, Vender, 2020).

An effective pedagogical practice capable of enhancing the different languages spoken in the contexts of children’s growth is non-performance shared reading from the earliest childhood as evidenced, referring to the Italian scene, by the Italian Library Association Project “MAMMA LINGUA Storie per tutti, nessuno escluso” (Stories for all, no one excluded), which, through the dissemination of books in several languages for children (0-6), spreads and consolidates the awareness of the importance of linguistic difference and of reading in the family in the native language. Consistent with Antonovsky's salutogenic model (1996), reading together with reference adults promotes and supports the well-being of children and the sense of self-efficacy of the parent (Murray, Egan, 2014). Furthermore, it is a key factor in approaching, in a pedagogical way, the enhancement of cultures and languages from the first months of life in an inclusive and intercultural dialogue perspective (Favaro, 2018). This is even more true in the presence of children with specific communication needs with whom adults sometimes make the mistake of using less structured and interactive language (Patrocinio, Schindler, 2014). We believe it is of the highest importance that pedagogical research and practice in this sector pay attention to an intensive multilingual reading curriculum and that this becomes a core element in the training of educational staff and in supporting parenthood.

Keywords:

Shared reading practices, inclusion, linguistic differences, interculture, complex communication needs, childhood.