Towards a Framework for Understanding Multilingualism and Dialogic Interaction in (Teacher) Education

This submission has open access

Abstract Summary

Schools throughout the globe are experiencing a growing number of pupils with a linguistic and culturally diverse background, leading to the emergence of new pedagogical challenges. These have highlighted both newly qualified and experienced teachers' lack of knowledge and skills for dealing with this ever-increasing diversity (Robinson-Jones et al., 2022). Given this importance of minority- or migrant-induced multilingualism in schools as well as of dialogic interaction for pupils' language and content learning (Duarte 2018; Rojas-Drummond 2019; Yuzlu and Dikilitas 2021), it becomes imperative to gain deeper insights into the relation between these two dimensions in education an teachers' professional development. Rather than studying them separately, we propose the use of a heuristic model of multilingual classroom interaction in which both dimensions as well as both the teacher's and pupils' perspectives are considered.

Submission ID :

AILA301

Submission Type

Oral Presentation

Select a Symposium

[SYMP70] Teaching (for) Diversity: Multilingualism in Teacher Education

Argument :

The presentation will focus on data from 20 Dutch primary schools participating in an educational design research program aimed at stimulating the use of multiple languages through a holistic approach (Duarte & Günther-van der Meij, 2018) based on translanguaging-based pedagogies (García, 2009; Duarte, 2018) and dialogic interaction. A mixed-methods approach will be used to demonstrate how data on discourse practices in whole class interaction can be analysed and interpreted using a heuristic model. Our data suggest that the nature of classroom interaction (i.e. tending towards more mono- or dialogic interaction) might influence the use and function of other languages in the classroom in translanguaging informed settings. The proposed heuristic model allows us to gain a better understanding of the relationship between multilingual pedagogies practices and dialogic interaction. In the presentation, the implications of these findings for teachers' professional development will be discussed.

Keywords: multilingual education; translanguaging; dialogic interaction; mixed-methods; whole class interaction

Sources:

Duarte, J. (2018). Translanguaging in the context of mainstream multilingual education. International Journal of Multilingualism, 17(2), 232–247. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2018.1512607

Duarte, J., & van der Meij, M. (2018). A holistic model for multilingualism in education. EuroAmerican Journal of Applied Linguistics and Languages, 5(2), 24-43. https://doi.org/10.21283/2376905X.9.153

García, O. (2009). Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. Blackwell.

Robinson-Jones, C., Duarte, J., & Günther -van der Meij, M. (2022). "Accept all pupils as they are. Diversity!" – Pre-service primary teachers' views, experiences, knowledge, and skills of multilingualism in education. Manuscript submitted for publication.

Rojas-Drummond, S. (2019). A dialogic approach to understanding and promoting literacy practices in the primary classroom. In N. Mercer, R. Wegerif, & L. Major (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Dialogic Education (1st ed., pp. 306–319). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429441677-26

Yuzlu, M. Y., & Dikilitas, K. (2021). Translanguaging in the development of EFL learners' foreign language skills in Turkish context. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2021.1892698