Multilingual school population: ensuring school belonging by tolerating multilingualism

Opening up towards children’s languages: enhancing teachers’ tolerant practices towards multilingualism

“…Working in the same school may therefore lead teachers to adopt a similar stance towards multilingualism in their teaching practices (Van Der Wildt et al, 2015). Differences between schools, however, do exist: An aggregated measure on school levels resulted in a school mean of 2.23 (SD = 0.63), which indicates that, on average, teachers seldom allow home languages to be used in the classrooms.…”

“…In earlier research, we compared the reported practices of teachers to pupils' perceptions and measured them by the same items, only we reformulated them from the point of view of the pupils (Van Der Wildt et al, 2015). Both reports correlated strongly (r = 0.65, p < 0.01), indicating that there was no important social desirability bias for this measure.…”

“…In this discourse, emphasis is placed on pupils' weaknesses, resulting in pupils' impression that teachers do not believe in them, which lowers multilingual pupils' sense of wellbeing. In schools where teachers take a more tolerant stance towards multilingualism, pupils have a stronger sense of school belonging (Van Der Wildt, Van Avermaet, & Van Houtte, 2015) and more self-confidence than pupils in other schools (Ramaut et al, 2013).…”

“…Differences between schools, however, do exist: An aggregated measure on school levels resulted in a school mean of 2.23 (SD = 0.63), which indicates that, on average, teachers seldom allow home languages to be used in the classrooms. Most schools involved in the study (Van Der Wildt et al, 2015) did have an official monolingual policy. However, schools differ in how the policy was put into practice.…”

Do birds singing the same song flock together? A mixed-method study on language as a tool for changing social homophily in primary schools in Flanders (Belgium)

“…However, many pupils in Flemish schools grow up with a different language than the one used at school (personal communication, Agentschap voor Onderwijsdiensten, October 26, 2012). Some schools are starting to allow a minimal usage of multilingualism in the school context (Van Der Wildt, Van Avermaet, Van Houtte, 2013). These tolerant practices towards multilingualism might have an influence on patterns of language-mediated homophily.…”