“Their heritage language suddenly plays a role” – Teachers’ beliefs on integrating multilingual linguistic landscapes in the plurilingual language classroom

Abstract

The aim of this article is to analyse teachers’ beliefs on integrating multilingual linguistic landscapes into the plurilingual language classroom. In an empirical study, a focus group interview was conducted with teachers of Spanish, French and Latin who have worked with linguistic landscapes in the realm of a language project day. Since teachers have generally positive beliefs towards plurilingualism, it remains underexplored what beliefs underlie their perspectives, namely heteroglossic and/or monoglossic perspectives. Using discourse and content analysis, beliefs can be placed on a continuum from a heteroglossic perspective (on plurilingual groups, interdisciplinarity and connecting languages) to a monoglossic perspective (on the special status of certain languages). Within this continuum, there are tensions in terms of ideologies, school structures, and teachers’ critical awareness that have the potential to lead to the co-construction of knowledge and learner-centred pedagogies.