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This paper explores preschool children's (aged 5:6) language development in nursery and at home. The study examines how children learn a new language in nursery and practise their learning at home. The data in this study is drawn from a long ethnographic research, which included two stages of data collection. I used participant observation, audio and video recorders to collect data. I conducted participant observations in nursery and at home. I also gave the family of the key participants a video recorder to record the children's interactions at home. This study draws on sociocultural perspectives to examine children's language learning. In majority contexts young children learn a new language when they start nursery/school. It is more likely that these children take their learning from school to home if their home language is not used in the school. The findings of this study show that the teacher scaffolds young children's new language learning by attaching different values to languages in classroom activities. It also indicates that the children practise their learning with collaboration from cousins and parents at home.

This study aims to examine teacher's beliefs about Syrian children's Turkish language learning and teacher's language strategies in a monolingual preschool classroom located in a multilingual city, Siirt Turkey. This ethnographic study was conducted between October 2019 and January 2020 in a multilingual city. The data included fieldnotes kept during participant observations of children's interactions and interviews with the teacher. The findings demonstrate that the teacher's flexible strategy (translanguaging) enables the children to communicate in their home language and learn a second language in classroom activities. They also indicate that although the teacher has monolingual beliefs about children's bilingual development, she provides children with a limited support of their home language use by enacting her agency in a monolingual setting. This study contributes to the discussion on the role of the teacher's agency using flexible language strategies and the theoretical concept of translanguaging by showing that refugee children initiate it into classroom activities in a monolingual classroom.

This study examines the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on parents and preschool children from parents' perspectives. We used an open-ended online questionnaire to reach parents (81: 60 mothers and 21 fathers). The questionnaire includes questions about gender, age, occupation and educational level, and questions about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The ecological model is used as the theoretical construct to examine interactions between children and parents at home. Three main categories are identified: "changing behaviours and routines," "challenges and difficulties," and "opportunities for parenting." The participants report that children's 11 social and emotional behaviours change during the pandemic in general and the lockdown. The findings indicate that the parents experience difficulties and have a lack of knowledge and expertise in supporting children's online learning. The findings contribute to studies on parental involvement by showing that the participant fathers are keener to spend time with children and help children's homework.

This study investigates children's science learning in a nursery in Turkey. The participating children (aged 5 and 6) are from a socio-economically disadvantaged community. This is an ethnographic study that includes participant observations and audio recordings of classroom interactions based on a long-term basis. It takes a socio-cultural approach and uses the concept of speech genre [Bakhtin, M. M. 1986. "Speech Genres and Other Late Essays." Austin: University of Texas Press] to examine children's science learning. The findings highlight the role of the teacher in learning scientific concepts. It shows that the experiments enable the children to test and investigate scientific concepts. It also problematises the role of the teacher in structuring science activities and classroom talk by suggesting that teachers need to be explicit when they introduce children to concepts, rather than leaving technical knowledge for children to make inferences.

This paper examines Kurdish preschool children's construction of gender roles. This research uses the concept of funds of knowledge to analyse how children draw on household and community knowledge in constructing gender roles in a nursery, Turkey. The data includes participant observations, audio and video recordings of interactions between the teacher and children in the nursery. This research shows that the children position their gender roles according to the values and expectations of their minority community. It is illustrated that gender constructions are performative (Butler, J. [1999]. "Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity." London: Reoutledge.), rather than biological constructs. The paper also suggests that we should not use the concept of funds of knowledge uncritically in favour of making the household knowledge of ethnic minorities apparent in the classroom.

This paper discusses advantages and disadvantages of being a researcher in a familiar setting. This study was conducted in a nursery in Turkey. In ethnographic research, conducting research in a familiar setting plays an important role in collecting and analysing data. Familiarisation with participants and settings is associated with 'insiderness' that a researcher shares the same language and culture with participants. The concept of positionality will be used to discuss the researcher's positionalities during the fieldwork. There has been a discussion about the role of familiarisation in conducting ethnographic studies and insider/outsider dichotomy. This study argues that the research process is not unproblematic for an insider researcher. It also indicates that there are advantages (e.g. ethnicity and former teacher) and disadvantages (being a male researcher) of being an insider in a familiar setting. The study highlights that the researcher made the arrangements to overcome challenges resulted from the researcher's gender.