Research into the implementation of multilingual pedagogies shows that even when teachers have positive attitudes towards the linguistic diversity of societies and their students, they still often choose not to implement them in the classroom (De Angelis, 2011; Haukås, 2016; Huxel, 2018). The reasons can be related to a lack of professional preparation, a lack of resources (time, materials, etc.) and skepticism about learning outcomes (Melo-Pfeifer, 2020). This presentation assumes that greater involvement of student teachers with association of civil society working with multilingual populations, through service learning (Aramburuzabala, McIlrath & Opazo, 2019), can lead to a more concrete experience of multilingualism outside the classroom and the university, becoming part of their professional “funds of knowledge”. These professional experiences have the potential to bridge the gap between the lives of the students they will encounter in the classroom and their initial training, thus reducing student teachers’ skepticism towards multilingual pedagogies and overcoming the monolingual habitus they have been through during their education path. Engaging in community service projects that require multilingual communication and the full use of linguistic repertoires, might lead student teachers to see the immediate impact of their language skills, fostering a sense of social responsibility, through the emotionally loaded living of multilingual strategies in their daily lives. This presentation draws on this educational framework, using service learning to promote linguistic activism and the subsequent integration of multilingual pedagogies across diverse academic disciplines (Duarte, Gerritsen, Lourenço, Melo-Pfeifer & Pinto, forthcoming). The proposed approach, developed in the scope of the project BOLD (Building on Linguistic and Cultural Diversity), seeks to empower student teachers of different school subjects as linguistic activists by engaging them in meaningful community service projects that require the application and celebration of individual and societal multilingualism. By intertwining service learning, language education across the curriculum and initial teacher education programs, BOLD aims to foster a deeper understanding of linguistic diversity, linguistic responsive practices at school and beyond school, and social responsibility. In the scope of BOLD, we developed resources about linguistic and cultural diversity to ensure social justice. We will present these resources along with responses of student teachers to them, gained through thinking-aloud protocols. We will show how crisscrossing service learning, linguistic activism, and multilingual pedagogies in initial teacher education programs offers a holistic strategy to prepare student teachers from different school subjects for active participation and implementation of multilingual pedagogies across the curriculum.

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