The master thesis deals with the challenges of increasing cultural and linguistic diversity in Austrian society for education and upbringing. Within the context of the master thesis, cultural and linguistic differences are seen as facts that must be considered in discussions about education and upbringing. This approach corresponds to the perspective of Intercultural Education, a sub-discipline of Educational Science that defines cultural and linguistic heterogeneity as the norm and

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... as a resource for educational processes. Migratory movements and increasing internationalization have changed Austrian society linguistically in recent decades. The presence and functional use of different languages in addition to the national language German are present phenomena in the Austrian population. Therefore, social multilingualism is a fact that needs to be taken into account in discussions about education, especially in the institutional context. A particularly large group of non-German speakers are children of preschool age. That is why elementary educational institutions are affected by the meeting of individuals with different languages. Pedagogues working in the preschool sector face the challenge of coping with the existing diversity of languages. The research carried out in the master thesis starts at this point: It examines how pedagogues at a selected elementary educational institution, the Viennese children's group La Rueda, deal with multilingualism and attempts to answer the question how their handlings effect the children's participation in linguistic educational processes in this institution. By collecting data through a participating observation, evaluating the data via qualitative analysis by Mayring (2012; 2010) and interpreting the results with regard to the goals of language education (Reich 2008), the main outcome of the thesis is that the children's participation in linguistic processes is affected by the educator's active handling of the five goals of language education, by giving children [...]