The presentation is based on a participatory research project (Bergold/Thomas 2012) that explores multilingualism in the pedagogical professionalization of elementary educators in two border regions: Carinthia in Austria with a Slovene minority and South Tyrol in Italy with a German and a Ladin minority. The scientific team cooperates with students of a vocational secondary school for elementary education, who carry out small ethnographic studies in preschools as part of their internships, and with professional associations for elementary educators who are concerned about strengthening minority languages, especially Slovenian in Carinthia, Austria. While both regions and their education systems, which have developed differently and are characterized by differing power relations, play a role in the overall project, the planned paper will focus on Carinthia in Austria.

In Carinthia, Slovenian was severely suppressed in the course of decades of repression by German nationalist groups (Busch 2014) and corresponding education policies. For this reason, Slovene currently plays a marginalized role in the Carinthian education system. This is doubly important in the project, as the students we cooperate with will later become preschool teachers. Thus, multilingualism is relevant in the project both in preschool and at school. One aim of the project is to explore the significance of multilingualism in pedagogical professionalization and how minoritized languages, both officially recognized and migrant languages, can be strengthened in professionalization.

Theoretically, we combine sociolinguistic theories on multilingualism in minority contexts and border regions  (Heller 2006; Pujolar/Puigdevall 2015), theories on language policies and practices in education (Jaffe 1999; Palviainen/Curdt-Christiansen 2022), and theories on pedagogical professionalism and professionalization (Helsper 2021; Doğmuş/Karakaşoğlu/Mecheril 2016). With a focus on policies of linguistic revitalization in education (Camilleri/Huss/King 2014), we explore the following questions:

- How are language policies negotiated and practiced in educational practice?

- In what ways are language and educational policy attitudes by teachers biographically based and how biographical experiences become the driving force behind transformation efforts?

- What possibilities do language and educational policy actors see for contributing to the revitalization of minoritized languages in education, and what opportunities for cooperation exist between researchers and these actors?

The paper aims to contribute to the discourse on language education policies and practices and to discuss questions about their significance in pedagogical professionalization in minority contexts and border regions.

The broader framework of our paper is a linguistic ethnography (Blackledge/Creese 2016; Tusting 2020). The combination of ethnography and linguistics is particularly interesting for the study of language(s) and power in educational settings. The significance of linguistic ethnography for educational research lies in its interest in language as “ideology and practice” (Heller 2007: 1) in educational institutions. Language might be the most fiercely contested commodity in education. It is a means of education, but also a powerful way of gatekeeping access to prestigious institutions of education. This is true for the different variants within a language (standard and non-standard), but also for the differently capitalised and minoritized languages, facets of multilingualism in globalised societies as well as for translanguaging practices (García/Lin 2017). In linguistic ethnography, language is regarded as a socially and institutionally situated practice through which powerful relationships between speakers are (re)produced, negotiated, shifted or irritated. These relationships between speakers are contextualised by a reconstruction of the language ideologies that are present in the “educationscapes” (Caprez-Krompák et al. 2022), e.g. in the architectures and linguistic landscapes of preschools and schools and their surroundings, in artefacts, or in legal and political documents that regulate the language practices of students, teachers and families. The linguistic ethnography is organized as a participatory project (Bergold/Thomas 2012) which allows us to cooperate with students and teachers. Empirically, our paper is based on the ethnographic fieldnotes (Emerson/Fretz/Shaw 2011) of the students and the research team, and on transcriptions of audiofiles and artifacts (photos, drawings, etc.) (Busch 2018). For this paper, we selected interviews with pedagogical professionals (Thoma/Platzgummer 2023) who are committed to the revitalization of Slovene in Carinthia.

Our paper aims at contributing to the discourse on language education policies (Bergroth/Palviainen 2017; Hornberger/Johnson 2007) and practices (Bonacina-Pugh 2012) and to discuss questions about their relevance in pedagogical professionalization (Thoma/Platzgummer 2023) in minority contexts and border regions across Europe. More concretely, our research questions aim at shedding light on the negotiation of language (education) policies and practices in minority contexts with a special focus on minoritized languages, on the biographical foundation of specific educational policy attitudes of teachers, and in possibilities for the cooperation of researchers and practitioners in the revitalization of minoritized languages in education.

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