Search Results (8)

We present data from a qualitative study examining how one class of preservice teachers (PSTs; n = 34) engaged in book club discussions about young adult literature featuring multilingual text and protagonists. Data focus on audio recordings and written reflection notes from a book club meeting where PSTs were asked to analyze transcripts of their previous book club conversations to explore their stances related to multilingualism. We ask the following questions: (1) What moments of their own previous talk during book club discussions about multilingual texts did PSTs select to analyze, and what reasons did they state for selecting those moments? (2) How did PSTs reflect on these moments during group discussion? and (3) What larger ideologies or discourses were manifested in these reflective discussions? We used descriptive coding to identify the topics of their selected events and rationales for selection, as well as tools of microethnographic and critical discourse analysis to consider how PSTs discussed and reflected on their own and others’ stances and how these conversations pointed to broader ideologies about multilingualism and the experiences of multilingual students. Full article

This study investigated the intersection between macro-level institutional narratives on plurilingualism and language education, and the increasingly complex linguistic repertoires that students bring to their school experience in South Tyrol (Italy). The paper first outlines the main specificities of this historically multilingual substate entity, and discusses how current educational guidelines celebrate linguistic diversity while failing to explicitly acknowledge the epistemic capacity of more recently settled minoritised language communities. Zooming in at micro-level classroom experiences, the paper then looks at the educational stances of one primary school teacher who took part in a participatory action research initiative aimed at the valorisation and mobilisation of students’ complex linguistic repertoires. Over two years, the initiative fostered collaboration among teachers and researchers to co-construct strategies aligned with the principles of pedagogical translanguaging. Through qualitative analysis of data generated through individual semi-structured interviews and a short reflective text, this paper shows how the selected teacher began to reconceptualise plurilingual education in more inclusive and equitable ways, i.e., supporting both institutional and non-dominant languages and legitimising the children’s diverse knowledge bases. By highlighting the role of teachers’ agency in challenging macro-level narratives from below, the study addresses the imbalances of power between institutionalised and non-institutionalised languages, and contributes to research framing plurilingual education as a socially engaged phenomenon in increasingly multilingual contexts. Full article

Pre-service teachers today face challenges and opportunities in increasingly linguistically diverse Swedish schools. The present study aims to understand how pre-service English teachers of Years 4–6 (ages 10–12) plan lessons while considering this linguistic diversity. The focus is on pre-service teachers studying a course, English Language Learning and Teaching, with an analysis of their lesson unit assignments, spotlighting multilingual perspectives in their planning. Language orientations (language-as-right, language-as-problem, and language-as-resource) form the theoretical foundation of this study. An ecological perspective is also utilized, focusing on how potential affordances for lesson planning found in contextual layers (e.g., the national curriculum or course materials) may affect their planning. The findings indicate that pre-service teachers generally employ a multilingual stance in their lesson unit planning, revealing a clear language-as-resource orientation across the cohorts studied. Furthermore, micro-level factors, such as course literature, have a more immediate impact than macro-level influences, such as the Swedish Language Act. New knowledge of how and why pre-service teachers understand multilingualism, as well as how they then plan lessons for English as a foreign language in the linguistically diverse classrooms of today, can be of value to all teacher educators. Full article

This case study investigated a modern language teacher candidate’s developing translanguaging stance in a Masters-level TESOL course as she made sense of emerging tensions while drawing on her personal and teaching experiences. Data included the participant’s oral contributions to the course, the course syllabus, and student-produced artifacts. We used thematic analysis focusing on the participant’s perceptions of translanguaging as both theory and practice to analyze the data. A semi-structured interview was carried out five years later to review the impact of translanguaging on the participant’s teaching and ideology as a Spanish teacher in a dual language program. Findings uncovered five primary themes all related to the participant’s biographically related development of translanguaging stance: traditional second language acquisition theories as a concern, updating the notion of social justice, the ability to support positive identity development, contemplating translanguaging as a pedagogy, and the longevity of the biographical approach to lifelong learning. The findings highlight the importance of biographical approaches to lifelong learning in language education and suggest that teachers can foster bilingual development, establish inclusive teaching strategies, and create equitable language learning spaces by recognizing the potential of translanguaging, which may be made possible by fostering similar contexts in teacher education courses. Full article

This article explores English immersion as a type of family language policy in the Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha. Although the field of family language policy (FLP) has exponentially grown in the last decade to include a range of multilingual contexts across the world, the policies regarding the use of English in monolingual Spanish households have received little attention. Due to the global spread of English, Spanish families invest in their children’s language education by maximizing opportunities for exposure to English inside and outside the home. This sociolinguistic ethnography of a group of 15 monolingual Spanish families with no to advanced English proficiency explores the interplay of English language ideologies, language socialization practices, and emotional investments in narratives of language experiences. This article discusses the enactment of agency among these families to sustain English immersion, which is driven by families’ English learning trajectories, professional development identities, and affective stances shaping lived experiences with English. Two main research questions organize this article: (1) How do Spanish families envision, manage, and implement English immersion practices? (2) How do these English immersion policies shape the sociolinguistic order at home and beyond for their children? Based on the findings provided by narratives of language experiences among these families, this study addresses the tensions and dilemmas related to English immersion in the field of family language policy. Full article

Machine Learning is an interesting tool for stance recognition in a large-scale context, in terms of data size, but also regarding the topics and themes addressed or the languages employed by the participants. Public consultations of citizens using online participatory democracy platforms offer this kind of setting and are good use cases for automatic stance recognition systems. In this paper, we propose to use three datasets of public consultations, in order to train a model able to classify the stance of a citizen within a text, towards a proposal or a debate question. We studied stance detection in several contexts: using data from an online platform without interactions between users, using multilingual data from online debates that are in one language, and using data from online intra-multilingual debates, which can contain several languages inside the same unique debate discussion. We propose several baselines and methods in order to take advantage of the different available data, by comparing the results of models using out-of-dataset annotations, and binary or ternary annotations from the target dataset. We finally proposed a self-supervised learning method to take advantage of unlabelled data. We annotated both the datasets with ternary stance labels and made them available. Full article

Immigrants constitute large proportions of the population in many high-income countries. Knowledge about their perceptions of antibiotics, in comparison to native populations, is limited. We explored these perceptions by organizing nine homogeneous focus group discussions (FGDs) with first-generation immigrant and native Dutch participants (N = 64) from Rotterdam and Utrecht, who were recruited with the assistance of immigrant (community support) organizations. The FGDs were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Inductive thematic analyses were performed with the qualitative analysis software Atlas.ti, using open and axial coding. We did not find noteworthy differences between immigrants and native Dutch participants; all participants had an overall reluctant attitude towards antibiotics. Within-group differences were larger than between-group differences. In each FGD there were, for instance, participants who adopted an assertive stance in order to receive antibiotics, who had low antibiotic-related knowledge, or who used antibiotics incorrectly. Native Dutch participants expressed similar difficulties as immigrant participants in the communication with their GP, which mainly related to time constraints. Immigrants who encountered language barriers experienced even greater communicational difficulties and reported that they often feel embarrassed and refrain from asking questions. To stimulate more prudent use of antibiotics, more attention is needed for supportive multilingual patient materials. In addition, GPs need to adjust their information, guidance, and communication for the individual’s needs, regardless of the patient’s migration background. Full article

This article reports on an interview study with six secondary school LX English teachers working in a part of Austria where there is an above-average number of residents–and thus also students–who are multilingual and come from migration backgrounds. It attempts to extend research on deficit perspectives of multilingual learners from migration backgrounds to the area of LX English learning and to provide insights into a language learning context that is underrepresented in international applied linguistics research, which has tended to focus on elite language learning. The article explores teachers’ perceptions of teaching English in this context. We hypothesized that teachers would hold negative beliefs about their students’ multilingual backgrounds and practices. The typological analysis of teachers’ interview data revealed that teachers did hold some dominant deficit perspectives about their students’ multilingualism and language learning; however, it also suggests that teachers are taking on the rudiments of a translanguaging stance that values multilingual practice. The article thus closes by considering how possibility perspectives can be harnessed and extended to foster students’ multilingual and multicultural development, with particular regard to LX English language learning. Full article