Session Information
31 SES 04 C, Developing Multilingualism Across the Lifespan: Effects of teacher beliefs and ideologies
Paper Session
Contribution
Multilingualism is not a self-evident field of action for school development in Germany. Yet, due to high numbers of children and young people bringing new languages into schools, the need for linguistic openness in schools has been frequently discussed, both in the European public sphere and in educational policy (Eurostat, 2017; Obondo, Lahdenperä, & Sandevärn, 2016).
The present paper is part of the German research project ‚Multilingualism as a field of action in intercultural school development’ (MIKS II), funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (2013-2019). By providing professionalisation programmes MIKS II supports 18 primary schools, with high numbers of newcomers bringing various new languages to the classroom. Teachers are encouraged to use those concepts as well as their own expertise and experiences so they can both tailor the prescribed concepts to their own local challenges.
Which factors can influence teacher practices while dealing with multilingualism in classes have only been studied in a few studies so far (Hammer, Fischer, & Koch-Priewe, 2016; Hachfeld, Schroeder, Anders, Hahn, & Kunter, 2012). But the focus group of these studies are often trainee teachers with few or no teaching experience. A research gap will therefore be closed through our research project MIKS II by focusing on experienced teachers who are confronted with multilingualism in everyday school life and teaching. Based on initial MIKS II pre-questionnaire results, language comparisons (58.9%, n =199) were identified as the most commonly used concrete multilingual teaching practice in our project schools. Further analysis of the 97 classroom observation protocols revealed how teachers used language comparisons with different goals (e.g., linguistic comparison, clarify ambiguity) and teaching situations (e.g., spontaneous versus planned language comparisons) in multilingual classes (Ticheloven, Schwenke-Lam, & Fürstenau, in preparation).
Based on results and experiences from the pilot phase of MIKS I and orientated on the competence model ‚Coactiv’ of Baumert and Kunter (2006), scales were developed, which should reflect the multi-dimensional handling of multilingualism of the pedagogical school staff (Huxel, Schwenke-Lam, & Cruz Neri, in preparation). From the piloted MIKS I questionnaire the scales of knowledge, self-efficacy and beliefs were adopted and extensively further developed (Fürstenau, Huxel, & Böttjer, 2014; Bonsen & Frey, 2014). Furthermore, a new scale for testing multilingual teaching practices was introduced. The reliability values of the four scales were as followed: for beliefs at α = .77, for self-efficacy expectations at α = .82, for practice practices at α = .68 (teachers) or at α = .78 (pedagogical employees in the open all-day schools (Ganztagsmitarbeiter) and for knowledge at α = .57 (Huxel et al., in preparation).
Two key research questions are covered in this article:
- How do teachers’ beliefs, self-efficacy expectations and knowledge affect the multilingual teaching practices of primary school teachers in Germany?
- Can interaction effects between the three predictors and further context variables (e.g., the percentage of children with migratory background) be noted?
Method
In the MIKS II project, a pre- and post-questionnaire survey will be carried out at all participating project and comparison school colleges within the three-year project period (2016 -2019). The post questionnaire survey is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2019 and is therefore not yet part of the analysis in this paper. The participating project schools were acquired in close cooperation with the Coordinating Office for Local Integration Centers (Landesweiten Koordinierungsstelle Kommunale Integrationszentren- LaKI) in North Rhine Westphalia (NRW), Germany. In order to obtain the comparison schools, more than 1,500 elementary schools in NRW were identified and invited to participate in this study. The over-recruitment of comparative schools compared to project schools in the pre questionnaire survey serves to secure a minimum sample of comparison schools for the post questionnaire survey, since an increased fluctuation of the comparison schools must be expected. The questionnaire survey was mainly conducted online and programmed with the online survey program ‚LimeSurvey’ (Schmitz, 2003). Completing the MIKS II questionnaires by the school staff was possible on the PC, smartphone or tablet and took an average of ten to 15 minutes. With the aid of LimeSurvey, group specific questions could be filtered for the respective project and comparison schools. (Sub-)Questions were generated according to occupational groups (e.g. school directors, teachers, other pedagogical employees). Alternatively, personalized paper questionnaires (PPFB) could also be made available to the school staff. Two of the 18 project schools had used this option in the pre-survey. The completed questionnaires were sent back to us via post and then manually transferred to the SPSS total dataset. For data preparation and analysis we used the SPSS 25 version and Mplus (IBM Corp, 2017, Muthén & Muthén, 1998-2017). The sample of the pre-survey included 18 project schools and 42 comparison schools with 714 participants in total. In this paper, we only consider the cohort of the teachers (n=538). Missing data were estimated with multiple imputation. To test our hypotheses, we applied a multilevel logistic regression model to predict teaching practices. While schools were defined as the cluster-variable in the model, our three measures (self-efficacy, teachers’ beliefs and knowledge) were treated as within-variables. For now, between-variables were not included in the model, but the analyses and results will be available at the time of the Conference.
Expected Outcomes
The analyses revealed that all of the three predictors affect teaching practices significantly. The results are portrayed in Table 1, showing that teachers‘ beliefs affect their teaching practices the most, followed by their self-efficacy and knowledge. Table 1 Results of the Multilevel Analyses Predictor B SE p Self-efficacy .29 .03 < .001 Teachers’ beliefs .48 .04 < .001 Knowledge .06 .02 .002 The same analyses were conducted with the pedagogical employees in the open all-day schools and the results differed slightly. While self-efficacy and beliefs still affected teaching practices significantly, knowledge did not reach significance. Based on a multi-level model, not only statements on influencing factors but also on interaction effects can be made that provide insight into the complex interplay of different levels which can influence and predict multilingual teaching practices.
References
Bonsen, M., & Frey, K. A. (2014). Belastungsreduktion durch Techniken der Klassenführung (BerT-Studie). Eurostat (2017). Asylum Statistics. Available online: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Asylum_statistics [28.01.2018]. Fürstenau, S. Huxel, K., & Böttjer, F. (2014). Fragebogen zum Forschungsprojekt Mehrsprachigkeit als Handlungsfeld interkultureller Schulentwicklung (MIKS I). Hachfeld, A., Schroeder, S., Anders, Y., Hahn, A., & Kunter, M. (2012). Multikulturelle Überzeugungen: Herkunft oder Überzeugung? Welche Rolle spielen der Migrationshintergrund und multikulturelle Überzeugungen für das Unterrichten von Kindern mit Migrationshintergrund?.Zeitschrift für Pädagogische Psychologie. 26(2): 101-120. Hammer, S., Fischer, N., & Koch-Priewe, B. (2016). Überzeugungen von Lehramtsstudierenden zu Mehrsprachigkeit in der Schule. DDS - Die Deutsche Schule. Beiheft: 147–171. Huxel, K., Schwenke-Lam, T. & Cruz Neri, N. (in preparation). Entwicklung von Skalen zur Erfassung von Überzeugungen, Selbstwirksamkeit, Wissen und Handlungspraxen zu Mehrsprachigkeit von pädagogischen Fachkräften. IBM Corp (2017). IBM SPSS Statistics for Windows, Version 25.0. Armonk, NY: IBM Corp. Kunter, M., & Baumert, J. (2011). Das Kompetenzmodell von COACTIV. In K. Mareike, J. Baumert, W. Blum, U. Klusmann, S. Krauss, & M. Neubrand (Ed.), Professionelle Kompetenz von Lehrkräften: Ergebnisse des Forschungsprogramms COACTIV: 29–53. Münster, New York, München, Berlin: Waxmann Verlag. Muthén, Linda K., & Mithén, Bengt O. (1998-2017). Mplus. User’s Guide. Eighth Edition. Los Angeles, CA: Muthén & Muthén. Obondo, M. A., Lahdenperä, P., & Sandevärn, P. (2016). Educating the old and newcomers: Perspectives of teachers on teaching in multicultural schools in Sweden. Multicultural Education Review, 8, 176-194. Oomen-Welke, I. (1998). Schüler und Schülerinnen als ExpertInnen im mehrsprachigen Deutschunterricht. In: Dies. (Eds.), “... ich kann da nix!“ Mehr zutrauen im Deutschunterricht. Breisgau: Filibach, S. 198-215. Schmitz, C. (2003). LimeSurvey: An Open Source survey tool [programme]. Hamburg, Germany: LimeSurvey GmbH. Ticheloven, A., Schwenke-Lam, T. & Fürstenau, S. (in preparation). Multilingual Pedagogies in Regular German Primary Classrooms. On How Teachers Employ Language Comparisons. In J. Duarte & C. Kirsch (Eds.), Multilingual approaches for teaching and learning. From acknowledging to capitalizing on multilingualism in European mainstream education. Abingdon: Routledge.
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