Multilingualism and School Development in Transnational Educational Spaces. Insights from an Intervention Study at German Elementary Schools

‘We Learn Together’—Translanguaging within a Holistic Approach towards Multilingualism in Education

“…The iterative design-based approach (McKenney and Reeves 2013;Cobb et al 2003) used to co-develop the multilingual teaching activities seemed to provide enough possibilities for teachers to develop their knowledge on language development and teaching in multilingual settings, to experiment with and implement different pedagogical skills in a translanguaging-based pedagogy and to report having developed a positive attitude towards the use of multilingualism in education. As such, our results so far contradict earlier findings on teachers perpetuating monolingual myths, (Angelis 2011;Fürstenau 2016;Gkaintartzi et al 2015), on the perception of migrant languages as a deficit (Kaptain 2007;Pulinx et al 2017;Tolbert and Knox 2016) and on home languages having little value, cognitively or otherwise (Gkaintartzi et al 2015;Pulinx et al 2017;Vaish 2012;Young 2014).…”

“…The current study, although based on a small sample of video observations and vignette-based discussions, points towards the importance of addressing pedagogical skills, knowledge and attitudes of teachers in PD (Fürstenau 2016;Pulinx et al 2017) while developing and implementing programmes for multilingual education. Teachers in our sample gradually embraced and used their pupils' multilingualism through experimenting in class in a small and safe scale, discussing the results with colleagues and researchers before engaging in another cycle of experimenting.…”

“…Conversely, those within the scientific community have seen the vast benefits of multilingualism as a resource to learners and classrooms, if fostered in an appropriate way by the teaching staff (Tolbert and Knox 2016). Currently however, the special linguistic and cognitive benefits available to multilinguals are typically allotted mostly to children belonging to a socially privileged background, where the transnational human capital offered by migration is commonly acknowledged (Fürstenau 2016). Equally, students deriving from socially disadvantaged migrant families, often presenting multilingual skills in languages low on the linguistic hierarchy, are seen as problematic or worse-a threat (Angelis 2011;Fürstenau 2016;Pulinx et al 2017).…”

Language Comparison as an Inclusive Translanguaging Strategy: Analysis of a Multilingual Teaching Situation in a German Primary School Classroom

“…The project "Multilingualism as a field of action in intercultural school development" (short MIKS-project) was funded by the BMBF (Federal Ministry of Education and Research) for six years (2013-2019). 1 MIKS includes a training programme for professionalization and school development, which aims at developing constructive approaches to incorporating students' home languages into the classroom (Fürstenau 2016). The training programme was developed in three primary schools during the first phase of the project (2013-2016) and then implemented and scientifically investigated at 17 project schools in North Rhine-Westphalia from 2016 to 2019.…”

Teachers' Beliefs and Strategies when Teaching Reading in Multilingual Settings. Case Studies in German, Swedish and Chilean Grade 4 Classrooms

“…Moreover, transnational education, such as participation in exchange programs at universities in other countries, tends to be highly valued. However, non-elite or non-European migrant students and their "transnational linguistic capital" (Gerhards, 2014) are often perceived as disadvantaged and their mobility and multilingualism tend to be judged as a negative factor with regard to school success (Fürstenau, 2016).…”