Exploring pre-service early childhood teachers' translanguaging perceptions in an EFL context: insights from a workshop

Translanguaging is increasingly being recognised as a valuable theoretical framework and an effective pedagogical approach which encourages teachers to draw on students' full linguistic repertoires. Albeit its growing recognition, pre-service teacher education programmes often do not teach about translanguaging pedagogies, leaving a critical gap - especially for pre-service early childhood teachers who play a foundational role in shaping young learners' additional language development. To address this gap, this qualitative study explores pre-service early childhood teachers' perceptions of translanguaging practices following a structured workshop in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) context. The workshop introduced translanguaging pedagogy to pre-service early childhood teachers, focusing on the flexible and purposeful use of Turkish and English in lesson planning and teaching activities, thereby fostering bilingual engagement. Data collection tools included semi-structured interviews and lesson plan scenarios. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. The findings revealed that translanguaging workshop made participants abandon English-only perspective and embrace multilingual and multicultural approach to become a global citizen. They broke free from constructs such as native-speakerism and monoglossic ideology by questioning the societal pressures contributing to their lack of confidence in teaching English. Implications are discussed.