"Imagining multilingual schools - How come we don't deliver?" - This is how the state of multilingualism in educational contexts was summarized in 2006 (Shohamy 2006). Today, more than a decade later, a number of psycholinguistic and socio-political arguments are available, supported by the findings of empirical teaching and school development research (Poarch/Bialystok 2017; Melo-Pfeifer/Helmchen 2018). Yet despite normative-theoretical discourses, scientific arguments and effective methods, teachers in many countries, continue to follow a monolingual norm (Fürstenau 2017; Young 2017; Pulinx/vanAvermaet 2015). Their expectations of a the homogenous monolingual learner group not only shape children's language development, but also their participation in educational processes (Morek/Heller 2012, Meier 2017).
How can we reconceptualise teachers' ideas of a homogeneous learner group? The paper presents several research projects that approach the topic from different perspectives: the perspective on language policies in politics, on educational institutions of teacher professionalization and the micro level of interaction. Theoretically, they build on concepts of linguistic market, language awareness and language education policy. The contextual framework is provided by studies in Israel and Germany, which I will present, including the underlying research questions.
The results allow deep insights into the how teachers' notions of a language norm emerge and develop, and illustrate the importance of a) binding professionalization in regular teacher training, which b) includes migration-related multilingual practices and c) reflection of those practices.
Short: How can we reconceptualize teachers' ideas of a homogeneous learner group? The paper presents several international research projects that approach the topic on three levels: the macro level of language policy, the meso level of educational institutions and the micro level of classroom interaction.
