Multilingual tasks as a springboard for transversal practice: Teachers’ decisions and dilemmas in a functional multilingual learning approach
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Date
2023
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Taylor and Francis Group
Abstract
Functional Multilingual Learning (FML) aims to leverage pupils’ full language
repertoire in a strategic and transversal way across the curriculum
in order to enhance access to conceptual understanding and improve
skills in the language of schooling. This linguistic-ethnographic study
explores the pedagogical decisions of four teachers in a French–speaking
primary school in Brussels, Belgium as they create ‘meaningful multilingual
tasks’ for their linguistically diverse classrooms. Findings
indicate that tasks serving symbolic and linguistic functions were the
easiest for teachers to conceptualise, and that class-level learning objectives
often took precedence over individual objectives. Multilingual
scaffolding only occurred in classrooms already functioning extensively
within a socio-constructivist paradigm and needed to be supported by
a free classroom language policy to be the most effective.
Description
Keywords
Teaching and Learning, Multilingual learning, Language, Teachers, Belgium
Citation
Foster, N. et al. (2023). Multilingual tasks as a springboard for transversal practice: Teachers’ decisions and dilemmas in a functional multilingual learning approach. Language and Education, 37(1), 22-38. 10.1080/09500782.2021.1958835