Namibian teachers’ practices in a multilingual context

Abstract

ABSTRACT The scope of the paper is to analyse Namibian mainstream primary teachers’ practices in the multilingual context they work in. As teachers have a central role in implementing language policies, their practices either support or impede learning as well as learners’ multilingual identities. Multilingual practices entailing rich scaffolding and translanguaging strategies are supposed to be beneficial for content and language learning and the learners’ identity development. The methodological approach adopted in this study is ethnographic, and the theoretical framework is linguistically responsive teaching and multilingual education. The data consist of teacher interviews and focus group discussions, a questionnaire and classroom observations. The analysis method is qualitative content analysis. The data were collected in two Namibian government primary schools in the beginning of the 2020 school year. The analysis shows that translanguaging strategies such as peer translation or explaining concepts in home languages are used, but rarely as pre-planned pedagogical strategies. Scaffolding is provided mostly through visual aids. It may be concluded that the translanguaging strategies already in use should be encouraged further, and multilingual pedagogies should be included in both pre-service and in-service teacher education.