Teaching & Learning Guide for: Multilingualism in Educational Contexts: Identities and Ideologies

Bilingual education & bilingualism

Language attitudes in multilingual contexts have been a rapidly growing research area. This paper presents a critical review of research methodology used in 32 empirical studies on learners’ language attitudes in multilingual contexts from 2003 to 2023. Firstly, it starts with a brief introduction to the background and research significance of learners’ language attitudes in a multilingual context. Secondly, this paper gives an overview on language attitudes and the existing literature of language attitudes in multilingual contexts. Thirdly, through the process of paper selection and review, the development and change of quantitative methods or mixed methods with emphasis on the quantitative part are analyzed and identified. Lastly, with a summary of the major findings and future trends of research methods used in this field, the conclusion part discusses limitations of this paper and implications for future research on language attitudes.

This paper reports on a study on in-service and pre-service teachers’ language attitudes and perceived proficiency in two multilingual education contexts: the Basque Autonomous Community (Spain) and Friuli Venezia Giulia (Italy). The total sample was made up of 1,094 participants (553 pre-service teachers, 541 in-service teachers). Data were collected by means of the same questionnaire used in a study published in 2007, which this research replicates. The cross-country comparison highlights the impact of diverse language policies; the Basque Autonomous Community shows robust support for the minority language, Basque, in contrast to Friuli Venezia Giulia’s less supportive approach to Friulian. Similarities include teachers’ high perceived proficiency in the State language (Spanish and Italian respectively) and positive views on multilingualism (including the minority, the majority and English as a foreign language). Notably, in-service teachers express more favorable attitudes than their pre-service counterparts towards the minority language, but less favorable towards the State language. With this study, we aim to contribute to the ongoing discourse on multilingualism within an educational system that embraces multiple languages, aiming to provide potentially valuable insights for policy and teacher training practice.

In general the use of minority language in schools is supposed to contribute to the maintenance of that language. The present study investigates whether this assumption is true for bilingual education in Friesland (i.e. the use of both Frisian and Dutch as media of instruction and communication). To this end 39 bilingually and 31 monolingually Dutch educated 6th graders were questioned on their language attitudes and usage (in various domains) and skills with respect to both Frisian and Dutch by means of a questionaire with multiple choice items. Analyses indicated that bilingual education in Friesland does not have a positive influence on attitudes and skills with respect to Frisian (as reported by the children). Usage of Frisian was more frequently reported by the bilingually educated group, although mainly in the expected school domain. Bilingual education in Friesland does not seem to contribute to the maintenance of the Friesian language. This study did reveal a stron. indication of the importance of Frisian as a subject for language maintenance based on the relation found between language skills in Frican and language use and attitudes. Because of its explorator nature, the conclusion of this study must be tentative.

In recent years, bilingual education in Latin America has expanded under the dual pressures of global English dominance and local commitments to linguistic equity. This study explores how teachers in an elite K-12 bilingual (Spanish-English) school in Ecuador conceptualize bilingual education, with particular attention to the ideologies that shape their instructional practices. The study draws on interviews with four teachers, two monolinguals and two bilinguals, and employs a comparative case study design to examine how language ideologies intersect with institutional structures and classroom routines. Findings reveal a strong English-centric ideology in which English is framed as the key to academic success and employability, often at the expense of Spanish and Indigenous languages that are integral to Ecuador’s multilingual context. Teachers’ own linguistic biographies influenced whether they enforced monolingual norms or embraced heteroglossic pedagogical strategies. The study emphasizes how bilingual education, when driven by unexamined ideologies, can reinforce rather than disrupt linguistic hierarchies. We call for greater reflexivity around language policy and pedagogy to support more equitable models of bilingual schooling.

Academic literacy, as a representation of required skills in the academic community, has gained increasing prominence and attention over the past decade. It has been the focal point of many studies in different contexts drawing on different perspectives. However, the way academic literacy development is researched and practiced in multilingual and multicultural settings is limitedly clarified and dealt with in second/foreign language contexts. Moreover, the role of different developmental trends of this research strand on EFL teachers in multilingual milieus has been overlooked, to date. To shed more light on the construct of academic literacy development in multilingual and EFL contexts, the present review article takes a global vision and explicates the past, present, and future trends in researching and practicing this significant construct. In so doing, it defines the concepts and presents the dimensions of academic literacy and academic literacy development. Then the role of academic literacy in multilingualism has been elaborated on using empirical evidence. Finally, the study provides and explains some implications for EFL teachers, teacher educators, curriculum designers, and scholars, who can update their information about academic literacy development in multilingual contexts with particular nuances.

This study addresses the challenges faced by pre-primary teachers (specialists and non-specialists in additional languages) in multilingual settings, with a specific focus on attention to diversity. Nowadays, schools are becoming more diverse both linguistically (Robinson-Jones, Duarte & Günther-van der Meij, 2022) and through the inclusion of special educational needs (SEN) students (Ramberg & Watkins, 2020). This study aims to identify the teachers’ needs in these contexts and to bring to light emergent topics on multilingualism and diversity. Ten focus groups were conducted for this purpose, and participants (pre-primary teachers) were asked to reflect on their competencies to address groups of young learners in multilingual settings. The participants originate from five different locations in Spain, characterized by different linguistic and social realities. The discussions were recorded and transcribed verbatim, and the software MAXQDA was used to facilitate the content analysis of the obtained data. Information was gathered from two perspectives: specialists and non-specialist teachers of additional languages. The findings reveal the complexity of adopting and incorporating the tailored approaches required by the increasingly linguistically diverse students and by those with special educational needs. Several key findings emerged, including the difficulties of the teachers when adapting to changing educational contexts, the lack of guidelines to facilitate teaching in multilingual contexts, and the teachers’ concern about diverse students. The results of this research underscore the importance of providing pre-primary teachers in multilingual contexts with multifaceted support (specific legal framework, training sessions, and classroom assistants, among others) to facilitate the inclusiveness of diverse young learners. The research, embedded in a national research project on pre-primary teachers’ competencies in multilingual contexts, contributes insights into teaching strategies in diverse multilingual settings.

Language ideologies are the shared frameworks through which groups understand language and speakers (GAL; WOOLARD, 2001; WOOLARD, 1998). In educational settings, these ideologies may impact learning as teachers who adhere to ideologies favoring monolingualism may undermine students’ identities and bilingual development in favor of assimilation. Using language ideology and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) frameworks, this study investigated the presence of different language ideologies in pre-service Spanish teachers’ discourse and their positioning in face of these language ideologies. The analysis demonstrated that while pre-service Spanish teachers challenge the ideology of monolingualism and favor bilingualism, they also legitimate the ‘one language’ ideology that entails that the unity of a nation depends partly on the use of only one language.

In times and contexts where multilingual classrooms and educational settings are the norm, attention to medium of instruction (MOI), and to practices around language use in teaching and learning, is unavoidable. Prioritising one language as the MOI over others arguably has a profound impact on all languages and their various stakeholders in multilingual contexts. MOI policy decisions, their enactments, and how these realise broader geopolitical and socio-political agendas in multilingual contexts present another layer of complexity in questions regarding MOI in multilingual education. MOI is deployed as policy and promoted as practice to pursue diverse objectives, but enactment in classrooms often provokes unexpected outcomes and multilingual practices that illustrate the creativity and resourcefulness of language users. As language users—teaching practitioners and their students—respond to fluidity and complexity in language ecologies of the current multilingualism (Aronin in Learning and using multiple languages: current findings from research on multilingualism. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, pp 1–28, 2015), researchers are in turn responding to investigate and analyse rich sources of data that can reveal the realities of moment-to-moment practices and that can offer new or alternative approaches and responses to the needs of diverse stakeholders. This chapter foregrounds how these challenges and complexities interact in relation to choices, implementations, and enactments of MOI in multilingual settings. It also explores how they impact on educational processes, developments and outcomes, as well as broader social and (geo)political agendas, and contributions researchers make to understand these.

Vojvodina, an autonomous province in northern Serbia, is a historically multilingual and multicultural area where multilingual education forms a cornerstone of linguistic, educational and social policy and practice: in addition to the majority language, five minority languages are also in official use and speakers of these languages may receive education in their L1. However, such a situation does not warrant positive attitudes toward the majority language. In fact, attitudes toward the majority population have been shown to be less positive among minority group members who receive their education in their L1 (Veres 2013). In addition to this, the effect of environment (compact vs. diffuse) has been shown to interact with attitudes. The paper examines the language attitudes of 423 Hungarian L1 grammar school pupils towards (1) their (minority) mother tongue (Hungarian), (2) Serbian as the majority language and (3) English as a foreign language, based on their value judgements and taking into account numerous variables which might prove to interact with their attitudes. The results of the research are expected to add to the study of language attitudes in a multilingual context, to help us understand better language situations in areas where bilingualism is promoted and to aid the implementation of coherent language policies.

Students’ language attitudes have long been considered important in the process of language learning, as they may impact academic achievement, and educators’ attitudes towards languages have also been studied for they may play a paramount role in shaping students’ attitudes. Hence, examining the development of teacher students’ language attitudes will help to better fine tune the specific teacher education programme. The aim of the present study was to analyse the development of primary teacher student attitudes towards English and to investigate the impact of personal, contextual and educational variables on those attitudes. This longitudinal study was carried out with 100 undergraduates enrolled in a degree programme in trilingual Primary Teacher Education. Our results show that self-perception of English competence level and specialist areas are the decisive variables. It was also revealed that these primary teacher students do not consider English a threat to their own identity. Furthermore, our findings suggest the need to go beyond students’ personal and contextual data to examine the particular educational context in greater depth, specifically, the language and educational policy being implemented, as both of these may impact students’ attitudes towards the target language.

Household Perspectives on Minority Language Maintenance and Loss: Language in the Small Spaces

Feedback, further known as assessment in this research, is critical to learners’ growth and learning. This study is grounded in verbal and written peer experiences acquired throughout peer evaluation in a multilingual context. This study aims to determine the problems of Grade 11 EFAL learners with peer assessment and how to develop peer assessment practices in a multilingual setting at the high school level. There were 27 learners in the class. Designated three learners gave three demonstrations on various matters premised on a requisite Grade 11 literature set book and were graded by their classmates. The perspectives of the learners who were assigned to work in groups were elicited by requesting them to respond to open ended questions in writing after their classmates’ presentations. According to the findings, some peer assessments can be subjective depending on the bond between the assessor and the assessed. The learners had a natural feeling of inadequacy in their assessments. When giving feedback in a multilingual setting, it becomes important to give it in a language they are most comfortable with. Similarly, helping students relate new information from peers to the knowledge that they already have helps them to understand and organise information in meaningful ways.

Feedback, further known as assessment in this research, is critical to learners’ growth and learning. This study is grounded in verbal and written peer experiences, acquired throughout peer evaluation in a multilingual context. This study aims to determine the problems of Grade 11 EFAL learners with peer assessment and how to develop peer assessment practices in a multilingual setting in the Further Education and Training phase. There were 27 learners in the class. Designated three learners gave three demonstrations on various matters, premised on a requisite Grade 11 literature set book, and were graded by their classmates. The perspectives of the learners who were assigned to work in groups were elicited by requesting them to respond to open ended questions in writing after their classmates’ presentations. According to the findings, some peer assessments can be subjective depending on the bond between the assessor and the assessed. The learners had a natural feeling of inadequacy in their assessments. When giving feedback in a multilingual setting, it becomes important to give it in a language they are most comfortable with. Similarly, helping students relate new information from peers to the knowledge that they already have helps them to understand and organise information in meaningful ways. Thus, the learners are comfortable with feedback that addresses the known that is then linked to the unknown. This calls for prior knowledge activation by other learners or even the teacher because new information is better integrated with existing information.Once students are used to peer assessment and have overcome their initial fears and hesitations, reliability is likely to be quite high, not that different from teacher reliability

Code-switching, the practice of alternating between languages or dialects within a conversation, plays a multifaceted role in multilingual contexts, particularly in education, communication, and cultural identity. This systematic review synthesizes existing research to explore the affordances of code-switching across diverse linguistic and sociocultural settings. The article examines its roles in enhancing comprehension, fostering learner engagement, and bridging cultural gaps, while also addressing its cognitive, pedagogical, and sociolinguistic impacts. Key findings reveal that code-switching serves as a powerful tool for facilitating bilingual and multilingual education, supporting identity negotiation, and promoting inclusivity in diverse environments. However, challenges such as stigmatization, policy constraints, and unequal power dynamics between languages are also highlighted. By analyzing patterns, trends, and implications from empirical studies, this review offers insights into best practices for leveraging code-switching as a resource in multilingual settings. It emphasizes the need for context-sensitive approaches and interdisciplinary collaborations to maximize its benefits while mitigating associated challenges.