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The purpose of this study is to examine how principals reasoning regarding how educators knowledge of the Swedish language affects preschool children's language development. Our three research questions are: How do principals reason regarding how educators language proficiency in Swedish affects children ́s language development? How do principals reason regarding educators' language proficiency in Swedish when hiring? And how do principals reason regarding linguistic competence development for educators in preschool? To collect answers, we conducted interviews with nine principals. We analyzed our results usingnthe sociocultural perspective and the theoretical terms linguistic learning, scaffolding and linguistic role models. Our collected empirical data showed that most of the principals, during recruitment, consider educators language proficiency as important. However, many principals also emphasize that they assign equal value to the educator's pedagogical competence when hiring, and that, at times, the educators language proficiency is considered subordinate. Furthermore, the principals agreed that educators are role models for the children when developing their language skills. Linguistic proficiency is seen as essential, but the principals opinions differ on whether it ́s the teachers language proficiency itself, or combined with the pedagogical competence, that is critical for children's language development and education. |
