Mother tongue, culture and performance in a multicultural context of Early Childhood Education

Abstract

This paper analyzes the differences in performance due to the different languages and cultures in the multicultural society. The problem of linguistic disadvantage distorts educational performance causing a decrease for those students whose mother tongue and culture does not match the official one. To know these differences, a sample of 501 students of the third year of Early Childhood Education was used, to which the degree of acquisition of the competence aspects of the areas of communication and language, social and motor was measured. The results show how the mother tongue is a factor of differentiation of the performance in this period. These differences, found in all areas, are greater in the area of communication and language than in the social and motor field. It is verified that differences are established between the students of culture of Christian and Muslim origin.