‘It is okay if you speak another language, but … ’: language hierarchies in mono- and bilingual school teachers’ beliefs

ABSTRACT

How do teachers deal with multilingual pupils, and what reasons govern these choices? Whereas most studies on this topic have examined teachers in schools with monolingual policies, this paper includes teachers at bilingual schools. Framed by pedagogical theory, we present a qualitative research study based on interviews with teachers in the German state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW). This area constitutes an interesting research site since 30-50% of the children are multilingual, but language policies in schools differ: Whereas most schools have a monolingual orientation, bilingual schools aim to purposely integrate languages beyond German in regular classes. Our results show that despite the differences in school language policies, despite different professional biographies and independent of knowledge on multilingual upbringings, teachers in mono- as well as bilingual schools reproduce the unquestioned perception of a monolingual norm. Furthermore, teachers at bilingual schools focusing on European languages deem migration-induced multilingualism as even less important than do teachers at regular schools. Finally, the results underline the importance of institutional policies and allow for insights into individual logic. On a larger horizon, the study contributes to issues of language-responsible teaching, equal opportunities, educational equality and social cohesion.

KEYWORDS:

• Teacher training
• multilingual education
• language beliefs
• migration-induced multilingualism
• language diversity
• translanguaging

Acknowledgements

We thank Maria Giakovenko, Barbara Schwarz, Sofie Jaster, Annika Nowaczyk and participating students for assistance with data collection and evaluation. We are also grateful to Helena Olfert, Celeste Brennecka and Clare Cunningham for comments on an earlier version of the paper. Any remaining errors and inconsistencies are ours alone.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Pseudonymized data and appendices are available through the IRIS database: https://www.iris-database.org/iris/app/home/detail?id=york%3a939554&ref=search

Notes

1 The terms ‘heritage/home language’ or ‘mother tongue’ are subject to controversial discussion in German discourse, as they bear an idea of a (foreign) heritage or one specific language with no actual relevance for the child’s life (Fürstenau & Gomolla, 2011). The present paper employs the term ‘family languages’; in the state of the art, we adopt the terminology of the authors.

2 Translanguaging can be broadly defined as ‘a process by which pupils and teachers engage in complex discursive practices that include ALL the language practices of ALL pupils in a class to develop new language practices and sustain old ones, communicate and appropriate knowledge, and give voice to new sociopolitical realities by interrogating linguistic inequality’ (García & Kano, 2014, p. 261).

3 NRW´s Ministry of Education identifies six bilingual secondary schools that offer several subjects in Dutch. Additionally to school subjects in German and English, they also offer subjects like computer science, technology, art, music, sport or social science in Dutch. Primary schools that offer Dutch bilingual education can also be found (Schulentwicklung, 2021).

4 Data were gathered by graduate students at the University of Münster as part of teacher training assuring research-based learning (Huber, 2014).

5 For publication purposes, statements were translated to English by the authors. To allow for further use of the original data in Dutch and German on IRIS, we identify the excerpts as follows: The contextualization starts with the number of the interview (I6), the official language policy at school (monolingual) and then the exact lines in the transcription (57-59).