Developing language awareness activities in the context of plurilingual education: two didactic models for language teaching practice

ABSTRACT

Within educational research, there has been an increased interest in recent years to develop learners’ language awareness (LA) in the context of plurilingual education. Recommendations and intentions are given pointing to the benefits, but there are few concrete tools for how it can be carried out in practice. The article seeks to contribute to this field by presenting two theoretically and empirically embedded models, developed in the PE-LAL project, used as didactic tools for developing LA activities in the context of plurilingual education across educational levels. The article describes how the models were used in a collaborative work between a researcher and in-service language teachers in a primary and lower secondary school in Denmark and gives three examples of teaching activities for grades 1, 5, and 7, respectively. Based on qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews with selected teachers exploring the teachers’ experiences with and perceptions of using the models, the article problematises that despite willingness the teachers find it difficult to use the models themselves because of, e.g. the monolingual norm reflected in language curricula in Denmark and the teachers’ limited linguistic knowledge. The article concludes with linking plurilingual education to teachers’ continuing professional development and teacher cognition.

KEYWORDS:

• Plurilingual education
• Language awareness
• Didactic models
• Development of teaching materials across educational levels
• Teachers’ continuing professional development
• Teacher cognition

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 Free access to the developed teaching materials (in Danish): https://engerom.ku.dk/forskning/centre/flersprogethedsdidaktik/undervisningsmaterialer/

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Danmarks Frie Forskningsfond: [Grant Number 0132-00208B].