Showcasing Multilingual TESOL in Practice: Case Studies from a Regional Australian University

Abstract

Multilingualism, or its more recent variation, plurilingualism, underscores the strong recognition of the multiple languages and varieties of language in any speech community. The deficit view of language learners’ linguistic competence has been increasingly giving way to the acknowledgment of first or multiple languages as valuable funds of knowledge which they bring to the language learning classroom. At the same time, the multiple language and cultural backgrounds of language teachers are acknowledged as an asset for professional practice. Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) teacher education programs need to critically engage with this turn to multilingualism/plurilingualism to effectively prepare our student-teachers for these changes. The University of New England (UNE) is a public university in Australia with approximately 22,000 higher education students. In 2019, UNE recorded the highest student satisfaction rating out of all the public universities in New South Wales (NSW) with an 83.2% overall satisfaction rating. In this chapter, we report on how in the School of Education at UNE, we have incorporated emerging theoretical and research findings around multilingualism/plurilingualism into the program design, delivery, and assessment of our TESOL teacher education programs and how this will prepare our students for working in a variety of educational contexts.