Research priorities in the field of multilingualism and language education: a cross-national examination

Abstract

Due to globalisation and migration, multilingualism has become both a reality and an aim of education systems across Europe, affecting how language education is shaped. To improve the ways in which schools cater for language education in diverse settings, research is required on the potentials of multilingualism in order to design curricula that foster skills in different languages. This paper aims at identifying and explaining research priorities in the field of multilingualism and language education in a cross-national perspective. It draws on data from a survey with 298 expert participants in five European countries (Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain) who ranked preidentified research topics in relation to their perceived urgency. Results show that experts identified 'effectiveness of multilingual support in regular lessons', 'features of multilingual didactics' and 'effectiveness of literacy support in home languages on the development of academic language skills in the majority language' as having the highest research priority overall. However, these results vary across national settings investigated. While the German, Dutch and Portuguese respondents attributed urgency to research on academic language skills, other issues were rated higher in the Spanish and Italian research contexts. The advantages and limitations of conducting cross-national research are also addressed.

Expert Evaluation on Urgent Research on Heritage Language Education: A Comparative Study in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain

“…Attempts to interpret these findings reveal the constraints of the survey method used, however. While we can see how expert participants responded to the research items, we do not know why they responded in such a way (see also Duarte et al, 2020). There may have been particular biases in expert panels that led to these stark findings.…”

“…We sought to establish a set of research priorities for HLE by analysing expert responses to relevant questions in a large, cross-national survey on multilingualism and language education (Duarte et al, 2020). Our findings and analysis show that HLE is perceived to be an important research topic among a sample of experts in the field of language education and multilingualism.…”

“…The participating countries in the large, cross-national survey were not selected systematically, but through a network of researchers who had expressed interest in implementing the German survey in their own contexts (see Duarte et al, 2020). While this points to a weakness in the overall methodology, the participating countries provide enough differentiation for us to identify trends in HLE research.…”

“…We thus sought to uncover the most pressing research topics concerning heritage languages lessons (HLL) and HLE. The study presented here represents a subset of a much larger enquiry to determine research priorities in the broad area of multilingualism and language education (Duarte et al, 2020) that contained two sets of questions on the effects and different aspects of HLE. Via a cross-national questionnaire conducted in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain, priorities were voiced by experts in the research area of multilingualism and language education.…”

Pour une éthique de l’éducation plurilingue

“…Si l'étude de Bialystok et al (2004) sur des participants âgés de 30 à 88 ans démontre que les bilingues, notamment chez les participants âgés, ont une plus grande capacité que les monolingues à inhiber une des deux langues selon la situation de communication, celle menée par Duñabeitia et al (2014) (Beacco et Byram, 2007, p.18). En dépit de certaines critiques que le champ a reçues (voir notamment Maurer, 2011), il a indéniablement contribué à l'émergence de nouvelles façons d'appréhender la diversité linguistique et culturelle à l'école et de contribuer à une meilleure relation école-famille (Candelier, 2003 ;Nocus et al, 2007 ;Cummins et Early, 2011 ;Hélot et Rubio, 2013 ;Bigot et al, 2013 ;Egli Cuenat, 2015 ;Krüger et al, 2016 ;Auger et al, 2018 ;Duarte et al, 2020 ).…”