Constructing differences: A qualitative analysis of teachers’ perspectives on linguistic and cultural diversity

Abstract

How teachers and students work together through discourse to construct their understanding of the context they live and work in will influence, in many different ways, the interaction within their classrooms. This article will describe a qualitatitive discourse analysis-involving three different groups of teachers—which focused on the way in which the participants assembled categories about linguistic and cultural diversity of students in a foreign language classroom. It will be argued that the ways in which these teachers categorised language learning and language learners within the context of linguistic diversity was relevant to the way in which they interact with a linguistically diverse context. Extracts from transcripts are discussed to demonstrate different categorisations related to diversity and foreign language teaching.