Teacher Beliefs and Practices : Multilingualism in English Classrooms
(2018) Exploring Language Education- Abstract
- Recent statistics on language diversity among pupils in Swedish secondary school classrooms show that 24% have another L1 than Swedish. Thus, classrooms are multilingual spaces. In the English subject, an 'English Only' ideology dominates, where classrooms are exclusively English-medium, an ideology endorsed by educational policy, agencies like the Swedish Schools Inspectorate, and teacher educators (Källkvist, Gyllstad, Sandlund & Sundqvist, in press). However, there is no clear empirical evidence supporting such an ideology, and recently an 'English Mainly' alternative has been suggested (Corcoll López & González-Davies, 2016). Still, a best practice remains unexplored. The project presented here is aimed at researching ideology... (More)
- Recent statistics on language diversity among pupils in Swedish secondary school classrooms show that 24% have another L1 than Swedish. Thus, classrooms are multilingual spaces. In the English subject, an 'English Only' ideology dominates, where classrooms are exclusively English-medium, an ideology endorsed by educational policy, agencies like the Swedish Schools Inspectorate, and teacher educators (Källkvist, Gyllstad, Sandlund & Sundqvist, in press). However, there is no clear empirical evidence supporting such an ideology, and recently an 'English Mainly' alternative has been suggested (Corcoll López & González-Davies, 2016). Still, a best practice remains unexplored. The project presented here is aimed at researching ideology and best practice in language-diverse English classrooms.
For the purpose of mapping teacher beliefs and practices relating to the use of English and other languages in English classrooms, a questionnaire aimed at targeting 6 relevant constructs was created and administered to a stratified, random sample of English teachers in years 6-9 across Sweden. Based on responses from 139 teachers (response rate: 43 %), results show that 66 % harbour beliefs that align with an 'English Only' ideology. Although 98 % report a general, positive outlook on multilingualism, 16-22 % state that multilingualism is a problem in either their school or teaching of English. Whereas 45 % reported that they often talk about how to teach in multilingual classrooms, only 15 % had received specific training by their employers. Implications of these and other results are discussed, together with the reliability and validity of the questionnaire itself as a measure of the targeted beliefs and practices. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/724165df-b5d6-4f13-abba-84e2fc13cd57
- author
- Sundqvist, Pia ; Gyllstad, Henrik LU ; Källkvist, Marie LU and Sandlund, Erica
- organization
- publishing date
- 2018-06-20
- type
- Contribution to conference
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- teacher beliefs, multilingualism, multilingual classrooms, ELT
- conference name
- Exploring Language Education
- conference location
- Stockholm, Sweden
- conference dates
- 2018-06-18 - 2018-06-20
- project
- Multilingual Spaces? Language Practices in English Classrooms
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 724165df-b5d6-4f13-abba-84e2fc13cd57
- date added to LUP
- 2018-06-21 08:23:48
- date last changed
- 2019-03-08 03:20:43
@misc{724165df-b5d6-4f13-abba-84e2fc13cd57, abstract = {{Recent statistics on language diversity among pupils in Swedish secondary school classrooms show that 24% have another L1 than Swedish. Thus, classrooms are multilingual spaces. In the English subject, an 'English Only' ideology dominates, where classrooms are exclusively English-medium, an ideology endorsed by educational policy, agencies like the Swedish Schools Inspectorate, and teacher educators (Källkvist, Gyllstad, Sandlund & Sundqvist, in press). However, there is no clear empirical evidence supporting such an ideology, and recently an 'English Mainly' alternative has been suggested (Corcoll López & González-Davies, 2016). Still, a best practice remains unexplored. The project presented here is aimed at researching ideology and best practice in language-diverse English classrooms.<br> <br> For the purpose of mapping teacher beliefs and practices relating to the use of English and other languages in English classrooms, a questionnaire aimed at targeting 6 relevant constructs was created and administered to a stratified, random sample of English teachers in years 6-9 across Sweden. Based on responses from 139 teachers (response rate: 43 %), results show that 66 % harbour beliefs that align with an 'English Only' ideology. Although 98 % report a general, positive outlook on multilingualism, 16-22 % state that multilingualism is a problem in either their school or teaching of English. Whereas 45 % reported that they often talk about how to teach in multilingual classrooms, only 15 % had received specific training by their employers. Implications of these and other results are discussed, together with the reliability and validity of the questionnaire itself as a measure of the targeted beliefs and practices.}}, author = {{Sundqvist, Pia and Gyllstad, Henrik and Källkvist, Marie and Sandlund, Erica}}, keywords = {{teacher beliefs; multilingualism; multilingual classrooms; ELT}}, language = {{eng}}, month = {{06}}, title = {{Teacher Beliefs and Practices : Multilingualism in English Classrooms}}, year = {{2018}}, }