Resumen de Tracing critical multilingual language awareness among experienced primary school language teachers in Norway

Lekh Nath Baral, Marcus Axelsson, Joke Dewilde

• Teachers' critical multilingual language awareness (CMLA) is central to establishing the relevance and inclusion of minoritized languages for pupils' linguistic and socio-affective development in mainstream language classrooms. This qualitative study explored the CMLA of eight experienced majoritized and minoritized primary school language teachers through semi-structured interviews investigating their experiences of implementing multilingualism as a resource in the increasingly linguistically diverse Norwegian classroom context. The findings revealed that the teachers demonstrated awareness of the benefits of using minoritized languages at socio-affective levels. However, these benefits were peripheral to mainstream language lessons and, therefore, lacked systematic and regular attention. As a result, the use of minoritized languages has fallen short of supporting the interlinguistic and intercultural development of pupils. The teachers' construction of language lessons as being primarily form-focused and their lack of understanding of critical language ideologies has hindered the inclusion of those languages. Majoritized teachers' experience working with minoritized pupils and minoritized teachers' own struggles to claim classroom authority have led them to use strategies to arouse socio-affective dimensions. However, the ongoing status quo calls for the need to support teachers' ideological awareness and reinforcement of prevalent classroom strategies aimed at socio-affective dimensions that expand to also support linguistic development.