Mila Schwartz Editor & Author

Mila Schwartz is professor in language and education and the Head of Research Authority in Oranim Academic College of Education (Israel). She received her first degree from the Pedagogical State University of Saint-Petersburg in linguistics and literature and completed her MA and PhD in the University of Haifa, in learning disabilities and literacy development among bilingual and trilingual children. Professor Schwartz conducted her post doc studies in Ben-Gurion University, Israel (the Kreitman Foundation Fellowships), and in Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto.

Her research interests include studying language policy and models of early language education, linguistic, cognitive, and socio-cultural development of early sequential bilinguals/multilinguals and family language policy. Currently, her research focuses on theorizing the phenomenon of interactions between child language-based agency, teacher's agency, and parents' agency in early language education. In this research she draws on Bronfenbrenner’s human ecology theory (1979, 1994) that provides a framework for understanding the role of early language education in a young child’s life. Recently, she has proposed and elaborated on the following theoretical concepts: Language-conducive context, language-conducive strategies, and child language-based agency. Her academic distinction at the international level is based on more than 20 years of extensive research and exemplary achievements in academia and at top-tier research organizations such as the International Symposium of Bilingualism, where she held the position of Secretary of the Steering Committee from 2015 to 2019, and the Multilingual Childhoods Network (known also as the Special Interest Group, SIG, of the European Early Childhood Education Research Association, EECERA), where she currently acts as Convenor.