Session Information
31 SES 02 A, Language Attitudes and Learning: From primary school to higher education
Symposium
Contribution
In Germany, about one third of children under the age of ten have a migration background, and speak other languages than German in their family (BAMF, 2016). As previously explained in this symposium, positive attitudes towards languages in the classroom are important, but there might be a gap between reported practice and attitudes, and concrete teaching practices. The present contribution focuses on teaching practices of teachers who have reported to be open to multilingualism, by investigating one specific multilingual teaching practice: language comparisons. The use of language comparisons has been promoted in the context of i.a. Translanguaging (e.g. Celic & Seltzer, 2011; García & Kleyn, 2016), Language Awareness (e.g. Hawkins, 1996) and more general multilingual pedagogies (Duarte, 2018; Herzog-Punzenberger, Le Pichon-Vorstman, & Siarova, 2017). Moreover, national and European policy makers have recommended comparisons as teaching strategy in multilingual settings (KMK, 2004, p. 7; Candelier et al., 2012). Examples of general pedagogic challenges of multilingual pedagogies, of which language comparisons are part, are that teachers are asked to give up part of their control and need to be sensitive when children cannot or do not want to act as expert (e.g. Herzog-Punzenberger et al., 2017). With regard to such challenges, the research question of this contribution is: How do teachers, who reported to be open to the languages in their classroom, involve language comparisons in their classrooms? While being theoretically relevant, the focus on language comparisons resulted from the questionnaire data in the MIKS II -project (Fürstenau, 2016). In MIKS II, running from 2016-2019 and based at Hamburg University, 18 German primary schools participated in a 1.5-year professionalization program. Before and after the professionalization program, teachers filled out questionnaires and during the professionalization two researchers collected ethnographic data of 97 lessons in four schools. The pre-questionnaire results demonstrated that the majority (59.8%) of teachers (N = 199) reported to use language comparisons as concrete teaching practice. Yet all the other multilingual strategies in the questionnaire teachers were reported less often. The ethnographic protocols from 97 lessons in four primary schools were analyzed in MAXQDA. Results show that comparing languages is a multi-purpose and malleable teaching strategy, which teachers plan for, improvise spontaneously or which is simply a response to student-initiated comparisons. The results also suggest that the success of comparing languages is highly dependent of students´ reactions, as comparing touches upon many deeper topics, such as questions about identity.
References
BAMF: Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge (2016). Das Bundesamt in Zahlen 2016: Asyl, Migration und Integration. Available online: https://www.bamf.de/SharedDocs/Anlagen/DE/Publikationen/Broschueren/bundesamt-in-zahlen-2016.pdf?__blob=publicationFile [30.01.2019] Candelier, M. et al. (2012). FREPA - A Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches to Languages and Cultures. Competences and resources. Available online: http://carap.ecml.at/Portals/11/documents/CARAP-version3-EN-28062010.pdf [21.12.2018] Celic, C., & Seltzer, K. (2011). Translanguaging: A CUNY-NYSIEB guide for educators. New York: CUNY-NYSIEB. Duarte, J. & Günther-van der Meij, Mirjam (2018). A holistic model for multilingualism in education, EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, 5, 24-43. García, O., & Kleyn, T. (Eds.). (2016). Translanguaging with Multilingual Students: Learning from Classroom Moments. New York: Routledge. García, O., & Wei, L. (2013). Translanguaging and Education. In Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education (pp. 63-77). Palgrave Macmillan UK Hawkins, E. (1996): Awareness of language. An introduction. Rev. ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herzog-Punzenberger, Barbara, Le Pichon-Vorstman, Emanuelle, & Siarova, Hanna (2017). Multilingual education in the light of diversity: Lessons learned. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. KMK: Kultusministerkonferenz (2007). Bildungsstandards im Fach Deutsch für den Primarbereich. Available online: https://www.kmk.org/fileadmin/veroeffentlichungen_beschluesse/2004/2004_10_15-Bildungsstandards-Deutsch-Primar.pdf [30.01.2019]
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