Teachers’ emotions, cognition and practices are deeply intertwined and not only influence one another but have a strong influence on how teachers interact with students (Frenzel, Daniels & Burić, 2021; Golombek, 2015). These interactions can take many forms and include the development of a relation of trust. Building on that, teacher emotions have been found to also contribute to their teaching practices  and in particular the setting of high expectations for (all) students (Frenzel, Daniels & Burić, 2021). In this contribution we aim to study what role emotions play in teachers’ perceptions of their students. More in particular we study how this takes shape taking into account the school policies towards multilingualism.

Teachers often struggle with the multilingual reality students bring into the classroom. This is particularly the case when ethnic minority and/or migrant students interact in their so-called heritage language with classmates, their parents or teachers and school staff on school premises (Valenzuela, 2010). A dominant discourse is to reframe the use of minoritized heritages languages into a deficit framework and this type of multilingualism if then perceived as the main cause of ethnic inequalities and strained teacher-student relations (Clycq, et al. 2014). To understand these teachers perceptions of multilingualism, teacher training programs come into the spot light. Indeed, some teachers feel ill-prepared by teacher training programs to teach in multiethnic and multilingual classes and consequently feel uncomfortable, which can impact teacher-student relations. Research in particular stresses the inadequacy of teacher training programs and supportive systems in schools towards navigating the complexities of teaching multilingual classrooms (Paulsrud, Juvonen, & Schalley, 2023). This in turn seems to have a negative impact on teachers’ attitudes towards multilingualism. In addition to this, it has also been found that positive teacher attitudes towards multilingualism do not necessarily mean enactment of such practices (Krulatz, Christison, Lorenz, E  & Sevinç, 2024). Many questions still remain about the relations between school level and teacher level variables. Many schools develop and implement a variety of policies, and policies in relation to language use and multilingualism in school is crucial to relate to teacher level processes.

Therefore in the current and ongoing study, first we investigate the relation between school policies towards multilingualism and teacher perceptions towards multilingualism. Moreover, we build on these insights and unpack the interplay of teacher emotions herein. We ask the question if teacher emotions (i.e. trust towards students) are affected by the multilingual policy in their school. We further study the relation between these emotions and the perceptions of teachers about multilingualism, and their teaching practices and attitudes through the concept of academic emphasis.

This study took place in the highly multilingual context of the semi-autonomous region of Flanders in Belgium, Europe, where the diverse language policies embedded in schools, as well as the high diversity of the school populations, create classrooms with a variety of home languages spoken and diverse students’ needs (Clycq, 2017). The high linguistic diversity is a key challenge for teachers’ worldwide and can influence teachers’ perceptions of competence as well as their emotional experiences.

For this study, we employed data acquired from a validated questionnaire measuring academic optimism (Lelieur, Clycq, & Vanhoof, 2022). The dataset gathers responses from 1061 in-service teachers from 37 different secondary education schools, offering a variety of educational tracks and governed by different denominational governing bodies. Looking at the distribution of respondents across schools this ranges from 11 to 58 per school, resulting in an average of 29 respondents per school. In our sample 63,4% identified as female, and their educational degrees were more or less evenly distributed across bachelor and masters. Particularly, our respondents come from the city of Antwerp, a city with high diversity in its population and the home languages spoken by its members. The majority of the school age population in Antwerp has a migration background, and often speaks multiple languages, next to the dominant societal language Dutch (which is also the language of instruction at school). The overall response rate stood at 67 %, with 1061 teachers participating. On average, there were 29 respondents per school, with responses ranging from 11 to 58 per school. The instrument was designed on a 7-point Likert scale, and the results were reverse-coded where appropriate; below we report descriptive statistics for our key variables. This dataset contains information about the perceptions of teachers on a range of topics and for our study specifically the following variables are key: teacher’s trust in students (TTS; M=5.63, SD= 1.13), teachers’ academic emphasis and the setting of high expectations (TAE; M=5.87, SD=.96) and the perceptions towards multilingualism (ML; M=3.73, SD= 1.93) as well as the perceived language policies (LPOL; M=4.52, SD=1.71) that exist in the schools that they are in. In general, our descriptive analyses shows that teachers’ trust and their perceptions towards multilingualism seem to be constructs that are varied across the different schools. However, teacher’s academic emphasis towards their students seem less varied.

For a more in-depth (although preliminary) analysis we employed correlational analysis for the sample of 13 schools which had received responses from at least 30 in-services teachers or more. The results show a strong positive, statistically significant, correlation ( r(11)= .80, p=0.008) between teachers’ perceptions towards multilingualism and the inclusivity of language policies that exist in each school. In other words, the more open the language policies of the school, the more accepting teachers’ seem to be towards multilingualism. Further, we find a moderately positive, statistically significant, correlation ( r(11)=.65, p= .01) between teacher’s trust towards students and their attitudes towards multilingualism. Finally, inclusive language policies at school level positively correlate (moderate, statistically significant correlation; r(11)= .57, p=.04) with teachers’ practices related to students’ academic potential, i.e. the academic emphasis the teachers put forward for their students. The existing language policies in schools appear to have a strong link with the multilingual perceptions and practices of teachers as well as their practices towards setting high expectations for their students. The school context seems to correlate strongly with teachers perceptions and practices. This could be understood in terms of teachers’ being supported and encouraged to enact multilingualism practices. In turn, stronger multilingual practices seem to go hand in hand with teachers’ trust in students, showing a clear link between teachers’ emotions and teachers’ practices influencing each other in bidirectional ways. Our preliminary findings seem to indicate that policies, perceptions and practices are deeply intertwined and that in multilingual context more inclusive policies and beliefs are crucial and could have important impact on positively increasing achievement levels for all students.

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