Introduction

The introduction to this edited volume provides a brief explanation of the background to the editorial project together with an overview of the book and its chapters. To contextualise readers, it begins with a discussion around multilingualism and early language learning in a linguistically diverse Europe and then introduces teacher education for early language learning, multilingual pedagogies and teacher qualification categories. The following section provides an outline of the main themes found in the chapters, which includes reference to the novel topics covered in the volume, the methodological approaches used to investigate multilingualism and early language learning, and the focus on active, participatory learning to promote a theory–practice nexus. The chapter closes with an overview of the 14 chapters found in the three distinct parts of the book: Teacher practices, teacher education and teacher education curricula in early language learning in Europe.