Building off of the work of Viesca et al. (2019), that important teacher knowledge and skills for working with multilingual learners fall into three major categories—context, orientations, and pedagogy—a multinational team of researchers has embarked on further exploring the orientations necessary for quality teaching and learning to occur with multilingual students. In Viesca et al. (forthcoming), this team operationalized five orientations, drawing from the empirical and theoretical research suggesting the orientations necessary for positive school and classroom climates for diversity. Since diversity in every possible aspect (e.g., language, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc.) is a major feature of multilingual populations, embracing diversity and elevating it to create community and a sense of belonging is critical for the work of teaching multilingual students.

In 2022, the team conducted an exploratory qualitative study, holding interviews and focus groups with teachers in Finland, Norway, Germany, England, and the US to discuss orientations and how they can create a positive climate for diversity. We also asked for specific feedback on the orientations we had identified and defined (Viesca et al., forthcoming). We sought insights from myriad practitioners working in varied contexts (e.g., grade level, content area, country, etc.) to understand the perspectives different practitioners held to these orientations. In this study, we examine the interview data (n = 22) to reveal the perspectives and ideas shared by our research participants regarding the orientations of interconnectedness and openness. 

We conceptualize interconnectedness as humanizing teaching and learning that produces belonging (Viesca et al., forthcoming). We view humanizing connections from one person to another, connecting the individual to the collective, as essential for co-constructing a positive diversity climate and creating great learning opportunities for multilingual learners. For this to be possible, relationships and practices must be purposeful for the community’s inherent diversity to be positively productive and thus capable of generating widespread, authentic belonging. To accomplish this, teaching/learning spaces must be deliberately developed to ensure individual self-actualization occurs in reciprocity and with accountability (Hayes & Kaba, 2023; Simpson, 2017). This way, personal self-actualization (grounded in self-determination and agency) ensures collective self-actualization through reciprocity and shared accountability. With interconnectedness, all forms of diversity can come into a relationship in positive and productive ways while co-creating authentic love and belonging at the individual and collective levels.

         We operationalize openness as teaching and learning that embraces multiple knowledges with grace. To counter issues of power that are deeply entrenched in our society and communities, we propose a commitment to epistemic humility, or openness, which is necessary to co-construct a positive diversity climate. Such openness is grounded in an ongoing acknowledgment and investment in what one can and cannot know. This kind of openness also recognizes that there are multiple ways of knowing, and thus, no universal epistemology or ontology should be privileged over all others. Such humility counters various issues of supremacy that impact teaching and learning practices, policies, and spaces. It is also the openness necessary to adopt new ways of thinking upon receiving additional information. Educators practice openness in teaching/learning through critical self-reflection and an ongoing commitment to rethink and disrupt various messages, biases, and social norms we accept without question. Finally, the kind of openness necessary to co-construct a positive diversity climate is the openness that embraces and operates around a clear understanding of humans as flawed (Hayes & Kaba, 2023). This openness in application accepts and expects all human beings to exist and operate in imperfection, thus offering grace, acceptance, and understanding to both others and self in the face of conflicts, mistakes, and problems, as well as successes and celebrations.

In this study, we ask: • How do practitioners discuss and contextualize the orientations of interconnectedness and openness in their practices? • What opportunities and challenges do participants identify to putting the orientations of interconnectedness and openness into practice? We collected qualitative data from five nations (Finland, Norway, Germany, England, and the US) with practicing teachers (n = 22): 3 Finnish, 4 Norwegian, 7 German, 6 English, and 2 American educators. In this study we conducted problem-centered interviews (Witzel & Reiter, 2012) that have been employed to facilitate discursive-dialogic knowledge production between the interviewer and interviewees. The lead author was present at each of the data collection events as was 1-2 additional research team members. We recorded the interviews for later transcription and collected background information using a short questionnaire. The transcriptions were created focused on the words spoken in the interviews and focus group exchanges. Each conversation was held in English except the focus group in Germany, which was held in German. The interviews took in general around 60-90 minutes. We analyzed the data using the Gioia method (Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton, 2013). This approach combines open (first order) coding with theory-centric (second order) coding, based on grounded theory principles. We engaged in these analysis processes collaboratively with the lead author engaged in all conversations and data analysis efforts in collaboration with both team members present for data collection and at least 1-2 members who were not present. Therefore, the coding decisions and data analysis efforts were deeply collaborative and dialogic including all members of the research team as well as a consistent perspective offered by the lead author. As an exploratory study, participants were largely found through snowball sampling and local relationships. We sought to recruit teachers to the study who could represent a variety of perspectives and life experiences. The teachers we talked to range from being relatively new to teaching (in their first few years) to highly experienced (in their last few years before retirement). We also talked with teachers from racially minoritized backgrounds in their local contexts, teachers who had moved to teach in their local context from another country, teachers who were monolingual in the local language, and those who were multilingual for various reasons.

Preliminary results suggest a relationship between the two orientations of openness and interconnectedness. In our coding, instances of interconnectedness rarely occur without instances of openness and vice versa. Additionally, participants discuss these orientations as essential for creating classroom and school climates where diversity is positive and productive for all students, especially multilingual students. However, participants also noted myriad barriers to the widespread implementation of the orientations of interconnectedness and openness. Specifically, issues in the larger sociopolitical context were invoked, like the impacts of social media, different policies impacting schools, teachers, and students, as well as the inability of school systems and structures to nimbly adjust to the rapidly changing student populations and world (like the changes experienced during the Covid-19 pandemic). These contextual aspects are particularly interesting since the study was conducted across multiple European countries and the US, thus offering important perspectives across varying national contexts. Participants also discussed challenges within schools like parental involvement and administrative support. Finally, participants noted the tensions and paradoxes they experience seeking to orient their work around interconnectedness and openness, particularly concerning the extensive standardization of educational outcomes in the context of widespread diversity, inequitable supports, and narratives about 21st-century learning and differentiated instructional approaches. Participants articulated an ongoing tension of not being able to do the work of orienting themselves and their students towards interconnectedness and openness due to restraints created outside and inside of school, leading to frustration and considerations of leaving the profession. A small subgroup of teachers had experience working in spaces where they could orient their practice towards interconnectedness and openness and reported the value of working in such spaces for themselves and for students and their families. In such spaces, participants overwhelmingly noted the use of democratic practices for decision-making at both the classroom and school levels.

Gioia, D. A., Corley, K. G., & Hamilton, A. L. (2013). Seeking Qualitative Rigor in Inductive Research: Notes on the Gioia Methodology. Hayes, K. & Kaba, M. (2023). Let this radicalize you: Organizing and the revolution of reciprocal care. Haymarket Books. Simpson, L. B. (2017). As we have always done: Indigenous freedom through radical resistance. University of Minnesota Press. Viesca, K. M., Alisaari, J., Flynn, N., Hammer, S., Lemmrich, S., Routarinne, S., & Teemant, A. (In Press). Orientations for co-constructing a positive climate for diversity in teaching and learning. In Teacher Education in (Post-) Pandemic Times: International Perspectives on Intercultural Learning, Diversity and Equity. Peter Lang. Viesca, K.M., Strom, K., Hammer, S., Masterson, J., Linzell C.H., Mitchell-McCollough, J., & Flynn, N. (2019). Developing a complex portrait of content teaching for multilingual learners via nonlinear theoretical understandings. Review of Research in Education, 43, 304-335. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X18820910 Witzel, A., & Reiter, H. (2012). The Problem-Centered Interview. SAGE Publications.