Mapping early childhood education and plurilingual pedagogies in Italy

This chapter maps early childhood education and plurilingual pedagogies in Italy. It describes the integrated 0–6 system established by Legislative Decree 65/2017 and its decentralised governance, and examines how national curricular guidelines and European frameworks, notably the 2019 Council Recommendation and the CEFR Companion Volume, frame plurilingual education. It presents good practices, including the Healthy Linguistic Diet project, the translanguaging action-research project L’AltRoparlante and Montessori-inspired intercultural activities, and reviews data from the national monitoring of foreign language teaching in preschools. It also considers inequalities in access to 0–3 services and teacher education pathways. The chapter concludes that plurilingual provision depends largely on local initiatives, in the absence of explicit national guidance, systematic assessment tools and sufficient professional development.