Multilingualism is the norm in most European countries. Especially in urban areas large proportions of student populations grow up with other first languages than the majority language (Extra/Yaĝmur 2004). Data from school effectiveness research prove that European school systems are far from providing equal opportunities for pupils with an immigration background and from linguistic minorities. The question of how to improve language teaching in the context of linguistic und socio-cultural diversity is one of the important issues discussed in German as well as in European education policy and research.

‘Academic language’ is a specific linguistic register students need to acquire in order to “become full members of the school community” (Gibbons 2002) and to be successful in school (Cummins 2008). In recent years notions such as “languages of school” (Council of Europe), “language of schooling” (Schleppegrell 2010) and – in the German-speaking context – “Bildungssprache” (Gogolin et al. 2011) have increasingly aroused attention in educational research and policy (e.g. European Core Curriculum for Inclusive Academic Language Teaching, EUCIM-TE Consortium 2011). But we still know little about teachers’ and pupils’ actual practices in dealing with linguistic requirements in educational contexts (Morek & Heller 2012).

This paper presents data and results of the German project BilLE (Bildungssprachförderliches Lehrerhandeln. Eine videobasierte Unterrichtsstudie in migrationsbedingt mehrsprachigen Schulklassen), a video based classroom study which analyses successful and innovative academic language teaching in regular multilingual classrooms. The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) from 2012 through 2014 and is being carried out at the University of Muenster. The purpose of the study is based on the assumption that educational disadvantages of migrant students can be mitigated by certain approaches in curriculum development. These approaches explicitly regard linguistic diversity as a necessary condition for developing teaching concepts (Fuerstenau & Gomolla 2011). The study takes a best practice approach and analyses classroom activities of expert teachers whose students have achieved unexpectedly high results in the language categories of assessment tests. These expert teachers were identified using a person-centered approach as well as by the results of assessment studies. Focusing on teacher activities, the following question determines the empirical analysis of our video study: How do teachers build bridges for their students to move from a level of everyday language to an academic language level?  

In our paper this question is examined more closely by focusing on the analysis of “periods of reflection” as they occur in classroom discourse (Fuerstenau, Lange & Urspruch 2012). In periods of reflection teachers and students interact linguistically in the analysis of an action, an event, an experience or a subject of study in a way that fosters deeper understanding. The purpose of this “reflective discourse” (Cobb et al. 1997) is to provide or enable access to further information and structures that are necessary to master a task. While periods of reflection are quite rare in existing studies (cf. e.g. Lotz, Lipowsky & Faust 2011), the analysis of the videos in the BilLe project shows that they are being used more extensively.

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