The Multicultural Kindergarten in rural areas in Norway - a good place for learning and participation for all children?

Abstract

In this article we present a selection of results from a survey conducted in kindergartens in Norway in 7 rural counties. Our main purpose is to discuss what conditions for learning and participation for children from linguistic and cultural minorities, based on the reported answers from the respondents, which seems to exist in rural kindergartens. The respondents are 525 pedagogical leaders and 288 head teachers. These were asked about various topics and pedagogical practices related to how they worked with children and families from linguistic and cultural minorities in their institutions. Our findings show that most of the kindergartens in the survey to a low degree meet the cultural and linguistic diversity in a satisfactory way in line with the National framework plan. Further, the results show that very few of the professionals in these kindergartens hold formal qualifications regarding linguistic, cultural and religious diversity. We end the article with some reflections around the responsibilities politicians and institutions providing preschool teacher education might have in these matters.