The study presented in this paper is set in one of Europe’s linguistically most diverse regions: Germany’s Ruhr Area in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), where about half of all learners at school age speak a home language other than the language of instruction (LIT NRW 2024). Local demands and the discourse surrounding the necessity to prepare future teachers for multilingual learner groups differ immensely across the globe (Wernicke et al. 2021). In NRW, all pre-service teachers are obligated to attend courses on German as an additional language (GAL) and multilingualism during their university education. This paper addresses a programme for prospective middle school teachers, in which pre-service teachers attend two compulsory modules with an overall workload of 360 hours (12 CP/ECTS). The GAL module typically covers topics such as multilingual and second language acquisition, specialised language (e.g. BICS and CALP), language diagnostics, different approaches and methods of language education or linguistically-responsive teaching (amongst others).

The study is based on an inclusive understanding of multilingualism (Schroedler 2021), including the overall linguistic diversity of learning groups, for example migration related multilingualism, but also register differences within one language. Research shows that especially those learners who struggle to meet the monolingual norms of school systems experience educational inequality (Henschel et al. 2022).

We use Kaiser & König‘s (2019) model of teacher competence as the main reference to describe competence development. This model divides competence into cognitive, affective-motivational competence (beliefs are part of this category) and teaching practice. Borg (2001) describes beliefs as a mental state of propositions. Regarding the change of teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism, there are several studies that report a positive development of beliefs related to teacher education (Kirsch & Aleksić 2018, Schroedler et al. 2023). A number of studies point out that teachers’ beliefs depict a complex personal interweaving (Fives & Buehl 2012). This implies that the development of affective-motivational competence needs to be understood in a more precise manner. From the theoretical and empirical framework described above, we generate the following research question for this paper:

1. How do different facets of pre-service teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism develop throughout their university education?
2. Which background factors of their (professional) biography affect the development and how?

We assume that pre-service teachers’ competence concerning teaching in multilingual contexts, in particular professional beliefs, become more welcoming towards multilingualism across their teacher education programme. The study aims to create a better understanding of pre-service teachers’ affective-motivational competence development with regard to teaching in multilingual classroom settings. Furthermore, the systematic data collection provides evidence-based information on how the teacher education curriculum can be improved in terms of its components addressing linguistic diversity in education.

Two full cohorts of pre-service teachers (n=504) in a large German teacher education programme participated in four measurements across their five-year university course. Beliefs about multilingualism at school were measured with an instrument by Fischer (2018) that operationalises beliefs in three scales: 1) multilingualism in the home, 2) multilingualism in teaching and 3) teacher responsibility for providing language support (research question one). In addition, correlations between pre-service teachers’ competence development and their biography have been analysed (research question 2).

While all scales’ development between t1 and t3 turns out to be significant, development between t3 and t4 is only significant for scale 2 (question one). The most striking correlation lies between the students’ motivation at t1 and their development of beliefs in scale 2 and scale 3 (question two). The paper will present these results in further detail, critically discuss the findings and relate them to research on teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism in different international settings.

Based on the assumption that teachers’ professional competence can be operationalised and measured, a quantitative design was chosen for this study. As the development of pre-service teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism was analysed, we designed a longitudinal study. Two full cohorts of pre-service teachers (n=504) participated in four measurements across their five-year university course. The overall complex research design is presented in Schroedler et al. (2024). This paper focuses on the development of pre-service teachers’ affective-motivational competence as well as relevant factors impacting the development. To measure the participants’ beliefs, a thoroughly piloted and validated instrument by Fischer (2018) was used, which operationalises the abstract construct of beliefs about multilingualism in three dimensions (scales): Scale 1) multilingualism in the home (5 items) Scale 2) multilingualism in teaching (7 items) Scale 3) teacher responsibility for providing language support (9 items) Participants were asked to rate their agreement concerning a short stimulus on a 4-point Likert-scale-type response format ((1) ‘strongly disagree‘, (2) ‘disagree‘, (3) ‘agree‘ and (4) ‘strongly agree‘). They also provided information on age, gender, educational biography, high-school diploma, semesters studied, study subjects (e. g. Physics, History, French, Mathematics), if they themselves and their parents were born in Germany or not, and whether they grew up with more than one language. Given the longitudinal study design, a description of the sample is more complex when referring to all measuring points. While theoretically participants who were in year two of their programme (t1 and t2) in 2020/21 should be in year 4 in 2023/24 (t3 and t4), it is important to point out that the study structure allows for extensive flexibility. This means that potential participants may have dropped out and continued in a later year or chose to attend the relevant modules at a (very) different point during their studies. Equally, later measuring points may have captured participants who had not participated in (all) previous measuring points for the same reasons. In this paper, only those cases were included who participated in the study at all four measurement points (N=77). This way, we present the development of pre-service teachers’ beliefs over the course of their entire teacher education programme. Firstly, we analysed the longitudinal cohorts’ development of beliefs applying t-test analysis for dependant variables. Secondly, we created a variable indicating the longitudinal development of beliefs from t1 to t4 and correlated this variable with the participants’ sociodemographic background factors.

This paper will provide analyses of the competence development among the reduced longitudinal sample, only including pre-service teachers who participated at all four measurement points (N=77). The sample’s background factors are as follows: 62.3 % of the participants are female, 35.1% are male and 1.3% diverse. 57.1% of the students indicated that they were brought up multilingually and 63.6% study a language subject. The overall motivation concerning the GAL and multilingualism module is 7.2 (mean) on a scale from one to ten. Concerning research question one (How do different facets of pre-service teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism develop throughout their university education?), all scales’ development between t1 and t3 turns out to be significant with a low to middle effect size (cohen’s d between .35 and .60). However, development between t3 and t4 is only significant for scale 2 (cohen’s d= .47). Concerning research question two (Which background factors of their (professional) biography affect the development and how?), we analysed a positive correlation between students’ own multilingual upbringing and scale 1 (pearson’s r=.258*). The most striking correlation lies between the students’ motivation at t1 and their development of beliefs in scale 2 (pearson’s r=.318**) and scale 3 (pearson’s r=.391**). The paper will present these results in further detail and critically reflect on the research methodology: the complex longitudinal design creates different challenges such as the high drop-out of participants over time. Moreover, the paper will critically discuss the findings and situate them within the increasingly diverse body of literature on teachers’ beliefs in different international multilingual settings (Wernicke et al. 2021). For example, we will relate our study’s results to other multilingual contexts, such as Kirsch and Aleksić (2019) or Haukås (2016), considering different teacher education systems.

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