Austria’s educational landscape has seen an increase in linguistic diversity in the past years driven by the increasing number of children with refugee biography (Statistik Austria, 2024). Based on Austria’s official school statistics, about 26% of students spoke a language other than German in their everyday life in the school year 2023/2024 (Statistik Austria, 2024). Research indicates that students who face barriers in the language of instruction experience academic difficulties (Alkatbi Chami, 2024), which in turn contribute to persistent achievement gaps between students with and without a migration biography (OECD, 2023). To address such disparities and ostensibly facilitate the integration of students who lack proficiency in German into the Austrian school system, policymakers introduced a pull-out model of German language support. It was provided in either six weekly hours of German language support courses (GLSCO) or 15-20 hours of German language support classes (GLSC), based on students’ German results from a standardised language screening instrument (Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research [BMBWF], 2019). The implemented program received criticism as it has created a “policy-practice” mismatch stemming from the conflict between the mandated guidelines and school-level realities (Schwab et al., 2024). In this context, school leaders, acting as frontline stakeholders, are responsible for upholding those rigid guidelines while managing the resulting constraints, such as staff and recourse shortages. This paper sheds light on school leaders’ experiences with the language support program and explores the tension they face between the need to comply to governmental mandates and the duty of ensuring educational equity that speaks to the needs of all students. Finally, the paper identifies the necessary reforms that Austrian leaders think needed for the program.

Objectives and research questions:

The current paper aims at examining and providing insights into the perspectives of school principals on the implementation of German language support program in Austria, namely German language support courses (GLSCO) and German language support classes (GLSC).

It addresses the following research questions:

1. How do the ministerial guidelines and laws on the German language support program (GLSC/GLSCO) pose challenges for school operation from the perspective of school leaders?
2. What changes do school leaders consider necessary in relation to the German language support program?

Theoretical framework:

The study is grounded in several key conceptual foundations. One fundamental theory is Lipsky's (1980) concept of street-level bureaucracy which explores how frontline workers or street-level bureaucrats, such as school leaders in the context of this paper, navigate the often-broad ministerial guidelines on ground particularly when faced with constraints like limited funding, staffing or other challenges. In essence, they rely on their discretionary decisions and practical judgments to put policies into action at the local level.

This street-level concept is situated within the broader literature on policy implementation which distinguishes between two major conceptual approaches: the top down (Pressman & Wildavsky, 1973) and bottom-up approaches (Lipsky, 1980). Within this framework, the regulations mandated by the government (top-down) stand in contrast to the nuanced, micro-level realities, where policies are adapted in accordance with the local circumstances (bottom-up). In the GLSCO/GLSC context, school leaders must interpret strict guidelines across diverse bottom-up realities in different school contexts and dynamics, which in turn creates  “complications at lower systematic levels” (Arar et al., 2024).

Another key theory in this context is standard language ideology (SLI) and Bourdieu’s (1991) concepts of linguistic capital and symbolic power. These concepts are drawn upon in this paper to illustrate how certain policies confer privilege and priority to the dominant language and social group over others, which can be observed in GLSCO/GLSC where linguistic diversity is treated as a deficit, reinforcing inequalities through segregation.

Research design This paper is part of a multi-perspective project on the German language support program in Austria and uses an online survey for data collection. It employs a mixed-methods approach to capture the experiences of school principals regarding the implementation of German language support program. Participants/ setting A total of 194 school leaders (163 female, 27 male, 4 missing) took part in the study, ranging in age from 28 to 65 years (M = 54.00, SD = 6.54). They also had an average of 29.3 years of professional experience and roughly 9 years of experience as school leaders. Participants were included from schools throughout all nine federal states of Austria, primarily in primary schools (n=148) and middle schools (n=25). Data collection Methods An online questionnaire administered via LimeSurvey, taking approximately 15 minutes to complete was conducted. A set of seven self-developed 4-point Likert scale (e.g., 'We have sufficient spatial resources at our school for the German support classes') items on the implementation of German language support, the availability of resources (personnel and spatial), and the teaching qualifications of the staff for the program were formulated for this purpose. Additionally, school leaders responded to two open-ended questions asking about 1) the specific challenges posed by the ministerial guidelines and 2) the changes they consider necessary to the GLSC/CO. Data analysis approach The quantitative data were analysed using descriptive statistics, with means (M) and standard deviations (SD) calculated in SPSS. For the analysis of qualitative data, derived from the two open questions in the online questionnaire and comprising text written voluntarily by the school leaders- reflective thematic analysis was applied using an inductive, semantic, and latent approach (Braun & Clarke, 2022). MAXQDA software (VERBI Software, 2021) was used for coding.

Quantitative findings showed varying levels of agreement among participants regarding program implementation and resources. A high variation was found in most items, which denotes the diverse implementations between schools and highlights the need for increased school autonomy. In fact, one third of school leaders reported not implementing the program according to ministry guidelines- a way of adapting to the constraints that the implementation of the program imposes. Resources were generally found to be insufficient reinforcing the impracticality of the program in daily school life. Principals also reported the highest agreement for the item on their collaboration with the mainstream teachers, yet the lowest agreement was for the item on the different organisation of the support classes. This gap reinforces the structural limitation of the support classes that forces leaders to maintain a “uniform character” irrespective of the school needs. Analysing the qualitative data derived from the two open-ended questions helped identify five main challenges that school leaders face when implementing language support across different schools. The first set of challenges is inherent to the program itself, which is viewed by leaders as “not practical” and not aligned with the best interests of children. The second relates to everyday school life, where the anticipated class homogeneity is affected due to factors like varying ages and language proficiency of students. The third category relates to limited resources, like staff shortage, large group sizes, and insufficient classrooms. Finally, the program was criticized for neglecting students’ backgrounds and fostering a deficit-oriented mindset that frames programmatic challenges as shortcomings of students and families. Regarding necessary changes, shifting the concept of language support models towards research-guided, inclusive models was prominent. Moreover, participants expressed the need to grant greater autonomy to school leaders, particularly on resource use, class composition, and grade promotion of students attending the program.

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