Opening up towards children’s languages : enhancing teachers’ tolerant practices towards multilingualism

Mainstream teachers struggle with linguistic diversity, often leading to restricting multilingualism. Scientific research, however, recommends including pupils' home languages in school. Various qualitative studies have evaluated implementations in schools and indicated possibilities for improving teachers' attitudes towards multilingualism. This paper evaluates an experimental implementation targeting an increase in tolerance towards multilingualism. The implementation was facilitated by external school coaches and consisted of 3 experimental tools affecting the school. Data originated from 62 Flemish primary schools (of which half were experimental schools) that participated in 3 survey waves (2012 and 2014; 763 teachers completed both waves). We used multilevel regression. We concluded that the implementation leads to higher rates of tolerance. The fulfilment of the basic conditions needed for a successful change was important, and the linguistic diversity of the pupil population and the investment by external school coaches did not affect the tolerant practices of teachers towards multilingualism

Language ideologies in schools: a conceptual model integrating two fields of research

Language practices mirror social interactions and stratification. Some groups in society are dominant over others leading to a higher status for the language repertoires they use. This process can also be seen in the region of Flanders, which is an interesting case because of its strong Dutch-only language ideology. Schools often do not know how to react to pupils using a language different from the language of instruction. It is suggested that school culture regarding these other languages can have an important impact on pupil's well-being. For example, as language is part of pupils' identity, they may feel uncomfortable because of a restrictive school policy in terms of home languages (Cummins, 2001). This paper applies the school effects model CIPO to the study of languages. A literature review on the sociolinguistic field and the school effects field is presented, demonstrating how both may be complementary. Firstly much sociolinguistic research has been conducted on language use and attitudes. Children from different social backgrounds use different linguistic codes an therefore have different opportunities to school success (Bernstein, 1973; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990). For a growing number of pupils not only the linguistic code they use at home differs from what is expected in schools, but the entire language differs. As sociolinguistic research is mainly qualitative in nature, we introduce the CIPO-model as a new methodological view in the field to better understand the effects of school culture regarding language. Secondly this paper adds to the field of school effects, because it introduced the topic of language ideologies. There is a whole body of quantitative research on the effects of school level variables on pupils, but little is known about effects of schools' language policies. To conclude we propose a new integrative conceptual model for studying the effects of school practices in terms of language on pupils' cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes

Opening up towards children's languages: enhancing tolerant practices towards multilingualism in teachers

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Multilingual school population: a lever for linguistically innovative classrooms

The empiric multilevel model presented in this paper intertwines sociolinguistics and school effects research, using insights from both fields. Sociolinguistic research has shown that school culture regarding multilingualism can have an important impact on pupils’ well-being. As language is part of pupils’ identity, they may feel uncomfortable or demotivated when (the use of) their mother tongue is pointed out as the cause of lower school success. A school culture, however, that embraces and exploits the multilingual reality may cause pupils to perform and feel better, as they are given the possibility to use their foreknowledge in the learning process (Cummins, 2001). School effects research has focused on teachability expectations teachers hold of pupils (Becker, 1952), suggesting multilingualism as an important factor in shaping those expectations (Agirdag, Van Avermaet, & Van Houtte, 2013). This paper focuses on how managing the linguistic diversity in a school motivates teachers for creative approaches to manage children’s multilingual repertoires and on how it inspires teachability expectations. Furthermore it reports on the impact that managing linguistic diversity has on pupils’ cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. The analysis in this multilevel model originate from a survey in 67 primary schools in which teachers and 4th grade pupils participated

Language ideologies in schools: integrating two fields of research

Language practices mirror social interactions and stratification. Some groups in society are dominant over others leading to a higher status for the language repertoires they use. This process can also be seen in the region of Flanders, which is an interesting case because of its strong Dutch-only language ideology. Schools are unsure on how to react to pupils using a language different from that of instruction. It is suggested that school culture regarding these other languages can have an important impact on pupil's well-being. For example, as language is part of pupils' identity, they may feel uncomfortable because of a restrictive school policy in terms of home languages (Cummins, 2001). This paper applies the school effects model CIPO (context --> input --> process --> output) to the study of languages and proposes a new conceptual framework for research. A literature review on the sociolinguistic field and the school effects field is presented, demonstrating how both may be complementary. Firstly much sociolinguistic research has been conducted on language use and attitudes. Children from different social backgrounds use different linguistic codes an therefore have different opportunities to school success. For a growing number of pupils not only the linguistic code they use at home differs from what is expected in schools, but the entire language differs. As sociolinguistic research is mainly qualitative in nature, we introduce the CIPO-model as a new methodological view in the field to better understand the effects of school culture regarding language. Secondly this paper adds to the field of school effects, because it introduced the topic of language ideologies. There is a whole body of quantitative research on the effects of school level variables on pupils, but little is known about effects of schools' language policies. The purpose of this paper is the presentation of a new conceptual model for studying the effects of school practices in terms of language on pupils' cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes. No empirical data are included