During the last decades, the number of migrants in Spain nearly quadrupled. Presently Spain has 5.025.264 foreign nationals living in the country (NIS 2019).  ‘Foreign students’ represent almost 10% of the total school population. In Andalusia, majority come from Morocco and China.

These demographic changes have contributed to the growth of linguistic diversity in schools, a diversity that is not new, but which is more noticeable with the rise of migrant students who do not speak Spanish. This tendency has led to increased inclusion of Spanish as a second language by teachers with little or no preparation in language teaching (Rodríguez-Izquierdo and Darmody 2019; Wassell, Kerrigan, and Hawrylak 2018).

This paper examines teachers´ ideologies towards linguistic diversity of migrant students in Andalusia (Spain) and, the way teachers perceive the native language maintenance and its use in the school context. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews comparing the voices of two types of teachers: ‘regular teachers’ (mainstream, content area teacher) and ‘specialist-language teachers’ (directly responsible for teaching Spanish as a second language) who are very complementary in their functions in the context of linguistic Spanish policies and at the same time unique in their training. While there are several studies on the linguistic ideologies of teachers from Catalonian, there is paucity about Andalusian teachers’ orientations. Thus, this article pursues to enrich the discussion about monolingual vs. multilingual approaches in Spain as part of a wider, international dimension of study of teachers' ideologies towards migrant students’ linguistic diversity and the use of native languages in the school context.

Critical consciousness of the importance of migrant students’ linguistic diversity ideologies concerning languages (use) is necessary for aligning individual beliefs with effective teaching practices. Processes of internalization of language ideologies by individual teachers should not be understood as mechanic processes. Rather, teachers execute these language policies in relation to the school context, their own experiences and beliefs (Creese 2010).

Ruiz (1984: 17) proposes three orientations to language and language policy: language-as-problem, language-as-resource, and language-as-right and indicates the interrelationship between language ideologies and language policy by suggesting that the concept of orientation refers to those ideological constructions that “delimit the ways we talk about language and language issues”.

Investigating the teachers’ ideologies towards linguistic diversity is vital as they represent a layer of language policy making and affect all aspects of teaching practices, particularly with diverse students (Bialystok 2018; Gkaintartzi, Kiliari, and Tsokalidou 2015; Pulinx Van Avermaet, and Agirdag 2017, Shohamy 2006). Numerous studies demonstrate that bilingual attitudes have advantageous consequences for teaching migrant students (Allard et al. 2014, Cummins, 2008.). For example, teachers' negative attitudes are likely to communicate lower expectations of academic achievement to language-migrant students and can be brought about by perceived difficulties in handling the situation in the classroom (Rodríguez-Izquierdo 2015; García and Wei 2014).

The findings showed that, overall teachers’ orientations towards linguistic diversity were inconsistent. In rhetoric, the specialist-language teachers demonstrated a greater appreciation for the linguistic diversity of the migrant students and viewed it more as a challenge. Conversely, the regular teachers had a less positive orientation, associating it with problems. Furthermore, participants advocate assimilationist language ideologies that consider – Spanish only– as an indispensable tool for academic achievement. Our results also highlight that teachers did not seem to be aware of the importance of students´ native language(s) as a right and its use as a democratic condition in a multilingual society such as Europe. The data show a need for professional development for teachers to move away from monolingualism to advocating for multilingualism to better reflect the realities of the classrooms.

The study is part of a larger project that investigated the views of different stakeholders' (principals, teachers, students, and families) about linguistic diversity in Andalusia (Rodríguez-Izquierdo, González-Falcón, and Goenechea 2018). This paper focusses on the views of teachers, employing semi -structured interviews, we compare the voices of two groups of teachers: regular teachers and language teachers. Participants The participants in this study were eight teachers: four teachers from regular classrooms and four teachers from special-language classrooms. Teachers selection was based on the following criteria: teaching migrant students for at least five years. The reason for choosing this group is the conjecture that they have enough knowledge on the phenomenon researched. Five are women and three men, and their age range is 28-53. The mean age of the participants was 37 years. The teaching experience time ranged from 5 to 17 years. Five were Primary and three Secondary teachers. The Secondary teachers taught Mathematics (1), History (2), and Social Studies (1). Furthermore, the latter reported not having any training in teaching Spanish. Procedure Teachers were contacted by email. The interviews were done in Spanish at schools over a period of 6 months. Interviews lasted between 60' and 85' and were recorded. The question protocol started with sociodemographic data (gender, age, years of teaching experience, qualification level, training in multilingualism /language teaching, contact/experience with migrant population and languages spoken). Finally, the guiding questions were as follows: 1. What do you think of student’s native language? Should they be taught in the school? 2. How do you understand the use of migrant students' native language in the classroom? 3. Do you think that their native language helped them to learn or on the contrary they become an obstacle to learn Spanish? Data analysis Critical Discourse Analysis was used (van Dijk 1998) for examining teachers’ ideologies. First, each interview was separately read in a comprehensive manner in order to identify data that showed aspects of bilingualism and use of native languages, Second, the selected texts were further dissected by focusing on specific linguistic features. Third, ideas were synthesized by keeping data to the original format and quoting directly from participants’ words to corroborate language ideologies and the use of native languages at school.

Overall, teachers hold a monolingual orientation towards linguistic diversity, adopting a subtractive bilingualism that seemed to be contaminated by the monolingual policy framework in Andalusia (Rodríguez-Izquierdo and Darmody 2019). Consequently, this view was used as a criterion not only to exclude students from mainstream classrooms, but also to naturalize this segregation. The implementation of these ideologies may encourage forced isolation that would eventually lead to the exclusion of migrant students. Furthermore, teachers did not seem to be fully conscious of their political dimensions concerning language diversity. They did not perceive it a ‘policy’ but rather as reality occurring, which led them to value the only Spanish language at school, in detriment of the native language (Rodríguez-Izquierdo et al. 2018; Gkaintartzi et al. 2015). Teachers deemed the use of native languages as a deficit to remedy and therefore, a hindrance for learning Spanish and for school achievement (Gándara and Hopkins 2010; Pulinx et al. 2017) instead of a learning resource (Ruiz 1984; Allard et al. 2014). These findings echo those of Bialytstok (2018) in which teachers considered linguistic diversity beneficial for students but more difficult for teachers. Specialist-language teachers associated linguistic diversity with more positive visions, compared to the regular teachers whose representations were usually as a problem. Participants tend to perceive migrant children merely as students ‘who lack a language’ (deficit perspective), understood as ‘knowing nothing’ (García, Kleifgen and Falchi 2008). Even language teachers -who are supposed to have a higher awareness of the importance of native languages- did not adhere to the language-as-right orientation (Ruíz 1984). This approach is quite rare in Spain possibly due to the relatively recent nature of migration in Spain and the diversity of the language background of the migrant students (Wassell et al. 2018).

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