Embedding a multilingual stance in secondary teacher education: An exploration of learning as an affordance

Abstract

Languages students bring with them to school are regarded as an important learning resource in scholarship, but monolingual norms can be resistant to change in teacher education. We embedded a multilingual stance into secondary pre-service teacher (PST) education, and investigated the associated learning as an affordance. Data were drawn from teaching materials, weekly reflective logs and end-of-semester interviews. PSTs' prior experiences with the formal teaching and learning of languages were the biggest indicator of openness to a multilingual stance, but the stance was interpreted differently in relation to English and other languages.