Evaluating teacher multilingualism across contexts and multiple languages: validation and insights

Abstract

In response to the need for quantitative instruments that can provide insights into language teacher multilingualism on a large scale, this article discusses the development of the MULTITEACH questionnaire via a five-stage process that consisted of a critical review of research on teacher multilingualism, seminar and practitioner consultations, a pilot study, reliability tests, and principle component analysis (PCA), followed by a larger study involving 460 multilingual language teachers and factor analysis to confirm the PCA. The questionnaire thus validated provides a comprehensive quantitative measure of assessing language teacher multilingualism across multiple foreign languages and in diverse contexts. A discussion of the factors influencing teacher multilingualism has also been included based on the findings from the larger study of 460 multilingual teachers.

“I feel like it’s giving me a lot as a language teacher to be a learner myself”: Factors affecting the implementation of a multilingual pedagogy as reported by teachers of diverse languages

“…Twenty-one FL teachers participated in the study (10 from Norway and 11 from Russia), which comprised the concluding phase of a larger project on teacher multilingualism and multilingual teaching practices. The previous phases of the project explored the beliefs and practices of multilingual FL teachers in Norway and Russia through quantitative means that provided insights into general trends in both countries (Calafato, 2020a(Calafato, , 2020b(Calafato, , 2021b; however, they lacked the exploratory power and fine-grained analysis afforded by qualitative research methods. As a qualitative component, while this study explored the implementation of MTPs in a small sample of teachers (N = 21), it did so in a way that revealed the specific factors that FL teachers reported as influencing their implementation of MTPs, how they related to the languages they taught, and how they viewed their multilingualism, something that was not explored during the project's quantitative phase.…”

“…MTPs are an umbrella term for practices where teachers systematically draw on their and their students' whole language repertoire as a pedagogical resource (Gopalakrishnan, 2020). MTPs can include translanguaging, where students and teachers use their languages integratively and interconnectedly (see García et al, 2017), activities that combine receptive skills (e.g., reading) in one language with productive skills (e.g., speaking) in another (Calafato, 2019;2020a), and the awakening to languages approach, where teachers seek to raise their students' general awareness of linguistic diversity (Candelier, 2004). The use of MTPs has been shown to boost student performance across all skill levels when compared to the use of a target language-only approach (Brown, 2021) and finds support among both students and parents (de Figueiredo, 2011;Moody et al, 2019).…”

“…This is implied in several studies where the FL teacher participants were found to implement MTPs only after reflecting on their own identity as multilingual language users (Ng, 2018;Park, 2012) and not that of their students. It is also worth emphasizing here that the multilingual initiatives launched by governments around the world, whether in Asia (Calafato, 2021a;Gao & Zheng, 2019), Europe (Calafato, 2020a;European Council, 2019), or the Middle East (Tang & Calafato, 2021), encourage students to learn multiple FLs as part of their school or university education, often two or more simultaneously. Yet, studies on the implementation of MTPs by FL teachers have seldom explored this multiplicity of languages, focusing instead purely on one language, mostly English (Calafato, 2019), with less attention paid to languages other than English (LOTEs) (Aslan, 2015;Calafato, 2020a;2021b;Brown, 2021;Haukås, 2019;Tang & Calafato, 2021).…”

“…It is also worth emphasizing here that the multilingual initiatives launched by governments around the world, whether in Asia (Calafato, 2021a;Gao & Zheng, 2019), Europe (Calafato, 2020a;European Council, 2019), or the Middle East (Tang & Calafato, 2021), encourage students to learn multiple FLs as part of their school or university education, often two or more simultaneously. Yet, studies on the implementation of MTPs by FL teachers have seldom explored this multiplicity of languages, focusing instead purely on one language, mostly English (Calafato, 2019), with less attention paid to languages other than English (LOTEs) (Aslan, 2015;Calafato, 2020a;2021b;Brown, 2021;Haukås, 2019;Tang & Calafato, 2021). The result is that we have an incomplete picture of the use of MTPs in FL teaching, one that does not accurately reflect the compound state of FL education in schools and universities, where students are encouraged to not only draw on their whole language repertoire but also to do so while learning multiple FLs.…”

Oral corrective feedback in English as a foreign language classrooms: A teaching and learning perspective

“…According to Ellis (2008), teachers should "make their own beliefs about language learning explicit, to find out about their students' beliefs, to help their students become aware of and to evaluate their own beliefs and to address any mismatch in their and their students' belief systems" (p. 24). The past few decades have seen considerable research attention regarding teacher and learner beliefs within the context of English as a second/foreign language (ESL/EFL) education (Borg, 2015;Calafato, 2020;Phipps and Borg, 2009). However, the relationship between teachers' and students' beliefs concerning corrective feedback has been under-researched.…”