Search Results (68)

This article presents a systematic review of recent literature on classroom pedagogy adopted in early and primary education to address linguistic diversity in early childhood and primary education. The study aims to answer the research question: ‘What does the literature say about current pedagogical practices and trends in addressing multilingualism in early and primary education?’ The review synthesizes evidence from a period of five years (2019–2024), utilising keywords such as “multilingualism,” “classroom pedagogy,” and “early and primary education.” From an initial screening of 806 studies, a total of 46 studies focusing on pedagogical practices in early childhood and primary education were included in this review. Findings highlight a shift towards multilingual pedagogies that recognise and build on learners’ linguistic and cultural strengths, particularly through translanguaging, multilingual and multimodal scaffolding, culturally responsive teaching, and practices that promote student agency, identity, and well-being. Emerging trends emphasise flexible use of learners’ full linguistic repertoires, digital and multimodal learning, and more formative and inclusive approaches to assessment, while highlighting the need for sustained teacher professional development and systemic changes to curriculum, assessment, and language policy to move beyond persistent monolingual norms. These findings have practical and policy implications, highlighting the need to strengthen teacher professional learning and develop curriculum, assessment, and language policies that embed multilingualism as a resource for learning. This synthesis contributes to a deeper understanding of how educational systems can adapt to and embrace linguistic diversity, ultimately improving educational outcomes for early and primary school-aged learners. Full article

This study explores how adult immigrants represent and position their mother tongue/heritage language (L1/HL) within their linguistic repertoires, adopting a heteroglossic perspective on bilingualism and situating the analysis within the autobiographical approach to language education. The research was conducted within the G.U.L.P. project in Naples and is based on a corpus of 268 language portraits produced by learners of Italian as a second language, complemented by oral presentations. Data were analyzed through an integrated quantitative and qualitative methodology, focusing on the spatial distribution of languages in the portraits and on the thematic content of the accompanying presentations. The results show that the L1/HL is most frequently positioned in cognitively and affectively salient areas, particularly the head and the heart, reflecting both rational and emotional conceptualizations of language. While no substantial differences emerge across biographical variables, some tendencies can be observed, including a greater association of the heart with female participants and variation across national groups. Overall, the findings highlight the central role of the L1/HL in learners’ self-representations and confirm the value of the language portrait as a tool for investigating linguistic repertoires and supporting the recognition of plurilingual identities in education, also with adult immigrants. Full article

This article examines the extent to which it is possible to reconstruct part of the technical knowledge employed in pre-Hispanic Andean constructions. Drawing on chronicles, colonial representations, linguistic studies, ethnography and direct architectural analysis, it demonstrates that Andean societies possessed specialised trades and a wider repertoire of tools than is commonly recognised. A central finding is the identification of gaveras—wooden moulds for making adobe bricks—whose recognition here shows that carpentry techniques were more developed than has been assumed. The poor documentation of these objects—several of them miscatalogued in Peruvian museums—has reinforced the mistaken assumption that complex construction tools were not used in ancient Peru. The study combines three approaches: direct observation of the built fabric (marks, imprints and textures that reveal construction processes), review of the Quechua vocabulary associated with tools and trades—drawn from three sixteenth- and seventeenth-century dictionaries consulted in the Langas repository of the CNRS—and comparison with current practices in Andean communities. This is complemented by a comparison with records from other cultures and a systematic search of the database of the Ministry of Culture of Peru, where plumb bobs, floats, shovels, axes, chisels and other instruments rarely analysed from a constructive perspective were located. Taken together, the article demonstrates that pre-Hispanic architecture was neither intuitive nor improvised, but the outcome of a technical tradition carried out by specialists, tools that are little known today, and construction methods based on measurement, alignment control, mortar transfer and careful surface finishing. Full article

Little is known about parents’ attitudes towards their children’s accent and the role they play in transmitting an accent (and attitudes about accents) to their children. Even less is known about how these perceptions and attitudes emerge and are transmitted in multilingual families. We draw on an online survey of parental language attitudes in Australia (n = 267), where 45% of respondents were born overseas, and 61% reported speaking a language other than English. Parents were asked whether they think their children speak with an Australian or another accent; whether they change their accent when they speak to their children, and whether their children’s accents change when they speak to their parents as compared to other people. A total of 14% of parents reported that one or more of their children had an accent that was not Australian, with about half of these children having reportedly hybrid or mixed accents, and the other half no accent at all. Over 11% of parents reported frequently or occasionally changing their accent with their children. Of those parents, several disclosed specific strategies in changing their accents around their children, such as making a conscious effort to sound ‘clear’ or deliberately exposing their children to different accents. A total of 15% of parents reported that their children’s accents frequently or occasionally change when speaking to them. These findings have implications for the complex influences on children’s language and dialect repertoires as they relate to language attitudes, language ecology, and linguistic identity. Full article

This study examines how levels of emotional awareness are linguistically realized in preservice EFL teachers’ reflective discourse in a foreign language following simulation-based learning (SBL). The data consist of nine semi-structured interviews conducted in English approximately one month after an intercultural simulation workshop. Emotional awareness was assessed using the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS), while linguistic realization was analyzed through an emotionally colored language perspective and a Systemic Functional Linguistics framework. The findings reveal three developmental profiles. Higher emotional awareness was associated with richer emotionally colored language and more frequent hypotactic structures, enabling participants to articulate complex and sometimes conflicting emotional perspectives. Intermediate levels showed more balanced clause organization and greater reliance on repetition as an intensification strategy, reflecting a transitional stage in which the ability to articulate emotionally complex professional experiences is still emerging. Lower levels were characterized by limited emotional vocabulary, frequent repetition, and reduced hypotaxis, indicating an initial stage in which the discursive repertoire has not yet developed. Overall, the findings suggest that emotional awareness and its linguistic realization develop in tandem, and the analysis of these patterns offers insight into preservice teachers’ evolving capacity to process emotionally complex professional experiences in a foreign language. Full article

In multilingual contexts such as the Basque Autonomous Community, fostering cross-linguistic awareness is essential to support literacy development and overall academic achievement. This study investigates a pedagogical intervention aimed at developing morphological awareness as a foundation for cross-linguistic reflection to enhance reading comprehension. A quasi-experimental design was implemented in a trilingual school with 70 sixth-grade students who were assigned to an experimental group (n = 24) or a control group (n = 46). Over a six-week period, the experimental group received explicit morphological instruction in the curricular languages—Basque, Spanish, and English. Morphological awareness and reading comprehension were assessed in all three languages. Although no statistically significant improvements were observed in reading comprehension, the experimental group demonstrated significantly greater gains in morphological awareness across the three languages. In addition, out-of-school exposure to Basque was positively associated with both morphological awareness and reading comprehension, highlighting the role of linguistic input. A strong association was also found between morphological awareness and reading comprehension, supporting the interdependence of these skills. Overall, the findings underscore the potential of pedagogical translanguaging to foster metalinguistic awareness across languages in multilingual educational contexts. Full article

Grounded in transnationalism and poststructuralist theories of identity, this study examines how educational trajectories shape language maintenance and identity development among return migrant students in Mexican universities who were educated across the United States (U.S.) and Mexico. Using a multi-sited qualitative case study design, we draw on in-depth interviews and reconstructed educational histories, analyzed comparatively across generational cohorts, age of return, and complete educational trajectories. The analysis identifies four distinct educational profiles, illustrating how different configurations of transnational schooling create differentiated conditions for language use, bilingual development, and identity negotiation. Findings show that while institutional contexts often reflect monoglossic ideologies, students strategically mobilize their transnational linguistic and cultural resources to navigate these settings. The study underscores the need for policy and pedagogical frameworks that recognize heterogeneous educational pathways and treat transnational repertoires as assets rather than deficits. Full article

This study investigates grammatical aspect in Greek and English oral narratives produced by Greek heritage speakers in the United States, examining aspectual marking across the bilingual repertoire, patterns of cross-linguistic alignment, and morphological restructuring. Using 31 narratives from the Greek Heritage Language Corpus, the analysis addressed (a) the role of background variables, (b) default aspectual preferences, (c) cross-linguistic alignment between Greek and English, and (d) morphological variation relative to baseline Greek. Quantitative results revealed a strong preference for the perfective aspect in both Greek and English, suggesting that past-time reference is typically conceptualized as completed or bounded. Education was the only factor associated with aspectual choice, with more educated speakers producing more progressive forms in English; no effects emerged for age group, generational status, schooling context, or years of schooling in Greek. Qualitative findings identified a limited number of systematic morphological simplification and analogical leveling patterns, including overregularization, and occasional periphrastic forms consistent with restructuring and possible cross-linguistic alignment. The results indicate that heritage speakers maintain the core distinction between perfective and imperfective aspect, despite favoring perfective forms across both languages. Meanwhile, they show emerging tendencies toward more transparent and analytic realizations, although such patterns remain quantitatively marginal in the present dataset. Overall, the findings support the view that heritage grammars are systematic, adaptive, and resilient linguistic systems. Full article

Multilingual learners (MLs) in U.S. schools continue to face systemic inequities shaped by monoglossic instructional ideologies and a deficit orientation towards their linguistic and cultural resources. Translanguaging pedagogy has emerged as a promising response, but it remains underexplored in STEM contexts. This study presents a systematic meta-synthesis of 20 U.S.-based empirical studies examining how translanguaging has been conceptualized and enacted in K–12 STEM classrooms with MLs, using an interpretive approach. The review identified four overarching themes. First, research and practice gaps reveal contextual, conceptual, and disciplinary limitations, particularly a lack of translanguaging work in math, early elementary settings, and English-dominant classrooms. Second, translanguaging was conceptualized as a syncretic and disciplinary practice, challenging rigid boundaries between languages, discourses, and modes while positioning MLs’ full repertoires as generative of disciplinary knowledge. Third, students and teachers were positioned as local agents of knowledge and practice. MLs were framed as designers of disciplinary meaning while teachers acted as collaborators and local policymakers. Fourth, the review identified persisting challenges, including language separation ideologies, narrow interpretations of translanguaging, and policy constraints. This synthesis contributes an interdisciplinary, equity-oriented framework bringing second language acquisition and STEM education, centering MLs as legitimate epistemic participants in STEM. Full article

The commonly recognised image of a choral conductor is of a person who stands in front of a group of singers and uses a set of gestures to direct them in performance. In order to arrive at this moment of shared musical experience, however, there is a long journey of preparation that must take place, from devising an artistic concept, to formulating a coherent and stimulating programme of repertoire, to realising such a programme by engaging in an extended period of rehearsal that encompasses vocal, musical, expressive, linguistic, and emotional facets and gathers diverse individual singers into a unified choral instrument with a common expressive purpose. In this article, two experienced choral conductors present structured reflective exegeses on artistic projects undertaken with their respective chamber choirs. Drawing on reflective approaches aligned with practice-based/artistic research, and on leading voices in repertoire programming and choral studies more broadly, the authors articulate and analyse their creative processes, highlighting considerations and goals for choral conductors both in designing programmes as a basis for impactful collective musical experiences and in enacting these experiences in a spirit of co-creation with choir members and other artistic contributors. Full article

This study analyses the variety of the language used in textbooks for teaching Italian as a second/foreign language. These books use a language much closer to written than to spoken Italian and do not consider its varieties, providing examples and exercises with a “neutral” standard that speakers rarely use in everyday speech. The aim of this study is to provide a critical review of pronunciation sections in current L2 Italian textbooks, in the light of a renewed and growing interest in the study of the Italian language, not only by students with a migrant background in Italy, but also by second and third-generation emigrants who want to learn Italian to recover their roots. Thirty-two Italian textbooks were examined, considering some geolinguistic variables. The general tendency seems to be the introduction of some neo-standard Italian features. As far as the phonetic–phonological level is concerned, this is probably still insufficient because of the complexity of the Italian linguistic repertoire. Our analysis further suggests the inadequacy of notions such as (neo-)standard Italian for teaching purposes in the linguistic space of global Italian. Full article

This systematic review examines how translanguaging has been integrated into educational assessment, a domain historically dominated by monolingual norms. Drawing on 33 empirical studies published between 2012 and 2023, we employed an inductive–deductive coding approach to analyze how translanguaging is enacted across assessment types and its implications for teaching, learning, and equity. The literature was concentrated in North America. Findings reveal affordances of translanguaging assessments including more authentic demonstrations of knowledge, deepen content learning, affirm multilingual identities, and reduce linguistic anxiety and challenges including perceptions of illegitimacy, systemic policy constraints, and resource inequities. We argue that translanguaging provides a transformative framework for reimagining assessment as a socially just practice that validates multilingual repertoires. To capture the varied engagements with equity, we conceptualize translanguaging assessment as an epistemological and political stance along a spectrum of justice. The spectrum ranges from access and inclusion to structural transformation to highlight how scholars frame translanguaging within assessment as descriptive practice, pedagogical equity, political resistance, and systemic reimagining. We call for more geographically diverse and methodologically varied research to sustain translanguaging’s impact and inform systemic change. Full article

This study advances Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) pedagogy by investigating the integration of Critically Oriented Sociolinguistic Topics (COST) in the heritage language curriculum. Thirteen self-identified SHL students from three courses (Intermediate, Advanced I, and Advanced II) at two universities in the Washington, D.C. metro area participated in semi-structured Zoom interviews exploring their motivations for enrolling in an SHL class, their perceptions of Spanish, and the impact of COST. Analysis identified recurring themes about underlying language ideologies and enrollment motivations, such as improving academic Spanish and grammar, career preparation, and connecting with course topics. Dominant ideologies, including essentialist, standard language, deficit, and commodification, were evident in students’ perceptions of Spanish and Latinx communities in the U.S. and abroad. Findings showed that students developed critical awareness of language variation that supported validation of their HL practices and the emergence of student agency. Some students moved from reproducing to contesting deficit and standard ideologies, asserting legitimacy for their own bilingual repertoires. These findings underscore the need for integrating COST in SHL courses to promote student agency, foster positive attitudes, and strengthen students’ linguistic confidence. Full article

Elaborating on the concept of heteroglossic stylization, this paper examines how a Moroccan comedian—Zakaria Ouarssam—stylizes Tamazight (Berber)-influenced Moroccan Arabic (MA) in order to evoke comedic personae associated with the country’s Middle Atlas region. Our analysis focuses on Ouarssam’s on-stage performances to document the complex multilingual repertoire that allows him to (i) create contrasts between a supposedly unmarked MA and a stylized Tamazight-influenced MA and (ii) evoke comedic stances that associate the latter with stereotypes of his home region. Particular attention is given to Ouarssam’s use of code switching between Tamazight-influenced MA and untranslated Tamazight as a novel and potentially boundary-pushing practice when considered in the context of its live performance on national television. The paper argues that Ouarssam’s stylized performances contribute to the construction and valorization of an alternative expression of Amazigh and regional pride, even as they reproduce certain linguistic hierarchies and ideologies. Full article

While Japanese universities promote English proficiency and intercultural competence, admissions still rely heavily on the standardised TOEIC test, often prioritising linguistic accuracy over cultural understanding. This emphasis can marginalise the experiential and interpersonal aspects of language learning essential for developing intercultural communicative competence (ICC). Although ICC is most effectively developed through a combination of formal instruction and informal learning, particularly involving authentic intercultural interactions, there remains a paucity of research examining how learners develop ICC beyond the classroom. Addressing this gap, the present study investigates how Japanese university students’ language repertoires, intercultural experiences, and knowledge shape their studies, and how their ICC develops throughout undergraduate education. One English major student was selected for in-depth analysis following his employment in a culturally diverse workplace that fostered meaningful intercultural interactions. His development was examined using four research tools: a survey, a journal, an interview, and TOEIC scores. The survey and test scores revealed growth in communicative assurance and language proficiency, while journal reflections and interviews captured critical incidents—including a shift from indirect to direct speech—that marked cultural adaptation. These findings suggest experiential learning fosters real-time communication, builds learner confidence, and supports transformational ICC development. Full article