Language Track: An Open Education Resource for Supporting Professional Development in Norwegian ECEC Institutions

In this chapter, we describe and discuss an Open Education Resource, Language Track, designed to support professional development (PD) in Norwegian ECEC institutions. The overall aim of Language Track is to enhance the quality of work with children’s language learning. The online resource provides a series of professional development sessions to be used collectively by all staff in kindergartens and includes a wide variety of tasks for learning, critical reflection and practice. Increasing the competence of staff in kindergartens is a National priority in Norway. The online resource offers an efficient and cost-effective way to address this need. Early reports suggest that kindergarten staff have welcomed the resource, perceiving it as relevant and useful for their work. Staff report an increased awareness of how they work to support children in language learning. Language Track centres the proposed professional development sessions around different content areas but always with the same methodology. In this chapter, we illustrate a session, which focuses on the use of digital texts such as picture book applications to support children’s language learning. We illustrate how the use of research-based multimodal online resources contributes to making professional development work relevant, dynamic, and interesting.