The past decade has witnessed a more or less unpredictable in- and outflow of migrants in many European countries, posing great challenges to schools and municipalities. Therefore, schools and teachers require not only flexibility, but also the expertise to address the needs of this vulnerable population. In The Netherlands, Flanders and Finland, and at the start of our European funded project ‘Education of Newly Arrived Migrant Pupils’ (EDINA), there were no requirements or guidelines regarding additional teaching skills for teachers of newly arrived students (Le Pichon et al. 2016). However, a large body of research has shown that with respect to learning a new language in the full sense of language learning, some strategies work better than others. For instance, in the scientific field, nobody at present denies the advantages of using one’s own languages in the educational context. However, despite the converging evidence for this observation, in 2015, logical implications derived from empirical knowledge such as this had not seen the daylight in the political arena (Herzog-Punzenberger et al. 2017). The pressing question in the context of the current migration dynamics in Europe is therefore: how can we translate these scientific insights into policies? To answer this question, it is essential to make sense of the dynamic complexity of social and linguistic representations, beliefs and practices, as well as of their effects on education. For this study, partly based on an adult-driven research paradigm and partly on a child-centred research paradigm (Prasad, 2015), we investigated the perspectives of policy makers, school stakeholders, principals, pedagogical counsellors and teachers about their experience of cultural and linguistic diversity. Based on transcripts of interviews, workshops for continuous professional development, international and national meetings that took place in the realm of the project between 2015 and 2017, and on answers to an international questionnaire, we show how the different stakeholders were gradually empowered to work together and to support inclusive principles and pedagogical practices in schools. In this presentation, we will describe qualitatively the development of their insights on inclusive education longitudinally. Our findings will shed light on the perceived resistance to inclusive education for newly arrived migrant pupils and on some considerations that prevail to the implementation of multilingual practices. With this presentation, we hope to contribute to improve insight in the sustainability of interventions at the level of professional development for linguistically responsive teaching.

Herzog-Punzenberger, B.; Le Pichon-Vorstman, E.; Siarova, H., ‘Multilingual Education in the Light of Diversity: Lessons Learned’, NESET II report, Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2017. Le Pichon, E., Baauw, S., Van Erning, R. (2016). Country report: The Netherlands. https://edinaplatform.eu Prasad, G. (2015). The Prism of Children’s Plurilingualism: a multi-site inquiry with children as co-researchers across English and French schools in Toronto and Montpellier. PhD. Thesis. Curriculum, Teaching & Learning, University of Toronto.