Although acquiring literacy skills in different languages is an explicit aim of most European schools, the expectations as to which languages should be explicitly developed to what extent differ. While literacy skills in the languages of schooling and acknowledged foreign languages belong to the educational status quo, fostering skills in regional minority, but specifically in migrant languages, is not yet at the center of literacy agendas in most schools. This study presents two design-based projects with 24 primary schools in the Netherlands, 50 teachers and 700 pupils focused on the development of pedagogical approaches that empower teachers to include several languages in mainstream instruction, thus softening the border between languages and building bridges between school- and home languages (Duarte & Günther-van der Meij, 2018). The linguistic resources of multilingual pupils are still often neglected in mainstream school settings, although their multilingual repertoires provide valuable resources for education. Multilinguals may in fact strategically apply acquired literacy skills in one language to write in another (Cenoz & Gorter, 2011). Not drawing on the full repertoire of multilinguals leads to inequality, lower literacy and discrepancies in language competences of multilinguals (Dworin, 2003). However, little is known on how to develop and implement a continuous didactical approach towards writing in multiple languages, that takes into account the language development phases of multilingual pupils and relates them to academic language development as fostered in schools. In this paper, we will draw on observational data and material from three years of implementation of multilingual education and propose a continuous approach for the didactics of multiliteracies, ranging from emergent literacy skills to alphabetization to using multiple genres and registers. The data will be discussed in light of language development theories and related to research on language teaching/multiliteracies. The study contributes towards a didactics of multiliteracies in education.

Cenoz, J., & Gorter, D. (2011). Focus on Multilingualism: A Study of Trilingual Writing. The Modern Language Journal, 95(3), 356-369. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4781.2011.01206.x Duarte, J., & Günther-van der Meij, M. T. (2018). A holistic model for multilingualism in education. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, 5(2), 24–43. Dworin, J. E. (2003). Insights Into Biliteracy Development: Toward a Bidirectional Theory of Bilingual Pedagogy. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 2(2), 171-186. doi:10.1177/1538192702250621