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

Abstract

Mainstream teachers struggle with linguistic diversity, often leading to restricting multilingualism. Scientific research, however, recommends including pupils' home languages in school. Various qualitative studies have evaluated implementations in schools and indicated possibilities for improving teachers' attitudes towards multilingualism. This paper evaluates an experimental implementation targeting an increase in tolerance towards multilingualism. The implementation was facilitated by external school coaches and consisted of 3 experimental tools affecting the school. Data originated from 62 Flemish primary schools (of which half were experimental schools) that participated in 3 survey waves (2012 and 2014; 763 teachers completed both waves). We used multilevel regression. We concluded that the implementation leads to higher rates of tolerance. The fulfilment of the basic conditions needed for a successful change was important, and the linguistic diversity of the pupil population and the investment by external school coaches did not affect the tolerant practices of teachers towards multilingualism. ARTICLE HISTORY

A monolingual approach in an English primary school: practices and implications

“…they deploy their linguistic and other communicative repertoires holistically and flexibly, as linguistically multi-competent people (Cook and Wei 2016). This is salient for primary migrant pupils in view of the cross-curricular nature of language learning in schools (Cummins 2018) in the context of immersion, or mainstreaming, which -as noted -frequently downplays or even rejects multilingualism (Van Der Wildt, Van Avermaet, and Van Houtte 2017).…”

Interdependence between L1 and L2: The case of Syrian children with refugee backgrounds in Canada and the Netherlands

“…Moreover, it is unknown to what extent the specific bilingual group of refugee children transfers abilities that they have developed in the L1 to promote learning the L2. It is not uncommon that policymakers and educators view the L1 as an obstacle for the successful L2 development of migrant children (Cummins, 2000;Van Der Wildt et al, 2017), instead of a resource. L1 skills are, however, important for socioemotional development, harmonious family relations, and for the overall well-being of migrant children (DeCapua & Wintergerst, 2009;Han, 2010;Liu et al, 2009;Tannenbaum & Berkovich, 2005).…”

Cultural Inclusion in Early Childhood and Primary Education

“…In addition, for both in-service and pre-service literature the majority of the interventions was focused at cultural diversity (46%) or both cultural and linguistic diversity (42%). A primary focus on linguistic diversity was less common with only four in-service papers (i.e., Daniel & Pray, 2017;Fokaidou & Hadjitheodoulou-Loizidou, 2014;Van der Wildt, Van Avermaet, & Van Houtte, 2017;Spies et al, 2017) and one pre-service paper (i.e., Polat et al, 2019) specifically targeting this type of diversity. Finally, we coded if interventions were targeting teachers' knowledge, skills, or belief systems, which showed different patterns for in-service and pre-service literature.…”

“…Other strategies, such as communities of practice (18%), critical friendships (13%), action research (2%) and video feedback (4%), were less common. Finally, an online component was used in 18% of the interventions and included activities such as online pen pal programs between teachers and culturally diverse children (i.e., Polat et al, 2019), computer simulated classroom dilemma's (i.e., Manburg et al, 2017), online teaching content (i.e., Van der Wildt et al, 2017) and online communication in critical friendship groups (i.e., Behizadeh, Thomas, & Behm Cross, 2019).…”

“…Furthermore, in-service PD was fully or partially embedded within the organization in over half of the papers (61%). Here, embedded means that PD was adapted to or specifically designed for teachers' needs and practices (e.g., Bradshaw et al, 2018;Van der Wildt et al, 2017), and/or PD meetings and activities took place within their own school or classroom (e.g., Affolter, 2017;McGrady, 2017). In-service PD that was not embedded usually consisted of external workshops or training programs (e.g., Biasutti, Concina, & Frate, 2019;Jones & Browne, 2015;Psalti, 2007).…”