The Ability to Thrive: How to Support Early Childhood Educators in Service of Diverse Learners

“Factors of home, school, and community contexts can either contribute to or constrict children’s growth and development, resulting in a child’s ability to survive or thrive in and across diverse contexts (Wright et al., 537).” 

There are a great many options out there to assist educators in becoming better at their craft. When you have multilingual/multicultural students with or without disabilities in your classroom, those options and requirements to be as effective as possible grow exponentially. Equity is the goal for these learners. Below are several options to get you on the right track to meet the dynamic needs of these students.

Initial and Ongoing Training on Addressing Paradigmatic Shifts in Pedagogy

Educators, especially those in early childhood (EC) settings, require not only a one and done approach to training on complex pedagogical concepts and strategies. Training that spans several hours without being spiraled back into professional learning in the future is likely to be forgotten or overlooked by teachers; like all the wonderful in-service training that falls short of their intended outcomes in the real world (Bellue et al., 2024). Ongoing training and support are a much more efficacious way of ensuring training sticks, or at least incrementally improves student outcomes even for those considered at risk (Green et al., 2025). Continuous growth and development is the key to increasing efficacy.

Inclusive and Multimodal Practices

Inclusivity is not your average buzz word in education. It represents ensuring the abilities, strengths, and needs of all students can be explored and enriched regardless of disability, language, or skin tone. Multimodal practices, those that allow for translanguaging and/or a variety of products to demonstrate learning, are critical to incorporate into a truly inclusive classroom where showing what you know may make sense differently in young learners (Evans et al., 2024). Not every child is typical, and those atypical kids deserve just as much love, attention, and growth, which is what research-based holistic programming, like Preparing Inclusive Early Childhood Educators (PIECE) and the Inclusive Early Childhood 

Teacher Education (IECTE), is trying to build in pre-service EC teachers (Evans et al., 2024). The programs mentioned both include greater diversity of interactions for pre-service EC teachers, which enable them to see the strategies they are learning in action and practice with real students.

Understanding innate biases is something EC teachers should be taught to do. We all come into the classroom with our unique/not so unique compilations of biases that affect how we see others; their abilities, their potential, their willingness, etc. Using those biases for productive reflection exercises where we practice addressing diverse students’ needs in asset-based terms rather than employing deficit terminology can become a habit if we practice enough (Davies et al., 2024; Evans et al., 2024). The inner discourse we use affects how we think and act (Lee, 2024), so using a regular practice to improve our readiness to see things from a more positive place will help us to address challenges more holistically. 

Develop/Strengthen Cultural Competence and Employ Anti-Racist Practices

Cultural competence is a medium of understanding diversity. Successfully employing anti-racist practices requires at least some cultural competency. Intentionally embedding both into teaching practices can bring greater equity into the classroom and foster a greater sense of community with families (Green et al., 2025). Giving yourself space to become more familiar with diverse students, their families, and their cultural assets can lead to a less fearful or uncertain reaction to those things as familiarity leads to liking in many cases (Rindfleisch & Inman, 1998). However, cultural competence cannot grow through structured classroom learning alone. Experience and interpersonal interaction are important to explore to gain more capacity and may support greater self-awareness, as well (Rocha et al., 2025), which in turn will support interactions and outcomes with learners (Lee et al., 2023).

Montessori Methods

Maria Montessori was ahead of her time. This approach to learning actually included room for all the modern educational concerns, like respecting cultural,
linguistic, and learning differences. Teachers serving as respectful, compassionate learning guides in multiage groupings that encourage collaboration between students with varying strengths supports developmentally responsive skill acquisition (Sablić et al., 2025). The attention to environmental design and individualized learning paths is transformational to the student trajectories. 

Training to Identify Intellectual, Relational, and Linguistic Challenges

For teachers with diverse student populations, having the skills to identify and address three major categories of difficulty can be invaluable. The major categories to differentiate are intellectual, relational, and linguistic. Every major challenge you will face as an EC teacher will fall under one of these umbrellas. Argumentative? That’s Relational. Switching languages when words are hard to retrieve? That’s Linguistic. Six year old having trouble with addition orally and needs more time with cubes? That’s intellectual. Attention-seeking? That’s relational. Having the ability to identify the challenge and be responsive can exponentially grow the relationships needed for students to learn (Kang & Fang, 2023).

Pick a place to start on your growth trajectory to do better by all students. There is even evidence that you will begin to act in ways that support diverse learners once you begin to feel as if you are becoming more competent (Fallon et al., 2023). You cannot lose! Best wishes in your professional trajectory.

References

Bellue, S., Bouguen, A., Gurgand, M., Munier, V., & Tricot, A. (2024). When Effective Teacher Training Falls Short in the Classroom: Evidence from an Experiment in Primary Schools. Economics of Education Review, 103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2024.102599 

Davies, A. W. J., Richardson, B., & Abawi, Z. (2024). Re-imagining the Image of the Educator in Post-Secondary Early Childhood Education: Calling for Epistemic Justice. Pedagogy, Culture & Society, 32(4), 1013–1031. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681366.2024.2355100 

Evans, L. M., Joseph, T., Jozwik, S., & Bartlett, M. (2024). Preparing Inclusive Early Childhood Educators (PIECE): A Conceptualization of Multilingualism, English learning, and Inclusivity. TESOL Journal, 15(4), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesj.863 

Fallon, L. M., Veiga, M. B., Susilo, A., & Kilgus, S. P. (2023). Do Teachers’ Perceptions of High Cultural Responsiveness Predict Better Behavioral Outcomes for Students? Behavioral Disorders, 48(2), 97–105. https://doi.org/10.1177/01987429211067217 

Green, A. L., Stormont, M., & Shuman, J. (2025). Supporting Equitable and Anti-Racist Practices in Early Childhood Programs: A Framework for Starting Differently. Preventing School Failure, 69(3), 215–223. https://doi.org/10.1080/1045988X.2024.2392521 

Kang, H., & Fay, L. (2023). Teacher Responsiveness as a Core Feature of Justice- and Equity-Centered Instruction. Science Teacher, 90(5), 38–43.

Lee, E., Subramaniam, K., & Castro, D. C. (2023). Early Childhood Pre-service Teachers’ Descriptions of Equity in Science Education: A Thematic Analysis. Early Childhood Education Journal, 51(3), 483–492. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-022-01318-1 

Lee, S. (2024). Dialoguing with Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP): What Does DAP Mean for Children with Disabilities and Inclusion? International Journal of Early Years Education, 32(3), 630–646. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2024.2347281 

Rindfleisch, A., & Inman, J. J. (1998). Explaining the Familiarity-Liking Relationship: Mere Exposure, Information Availability, or Social Desirability? Marketing Letters, 9(1), 5–19. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007958302123 

Rocha, P., Igland, K., & Cybulska, J. (2025). Snap Judgements and Cultural Bias: Developing Intercultural Competence in Customs Officer Education in Norway. World Customs Journal, 19(2), 112–137. https://doi.org/10.55596/001c.144241 

Sablić, M., Mirosavljević, A., & Bogatić, K. (2025). Multigrade Education and the Montessori Model: A Pathway Towards Inclusion and Equity. International Journal of Educational Research, 131. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2025.102600 

Wright, B. L., Friedman, S., & Bredekamp, S. (2024). Looking Back to Move Forward: Reflecting on Developmentally Appropriate Practice to Advance Equity in Early Childhood Education. International Journal of Early Years Education, 32(3), 530–546. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2024.2343060