Acceso usuarios
Yaqiong Xu
, MaryAnn Christison, Anna Krulatz
Amid the multilingual turn in education, there is a need to explore and encourage the enactment of teacher multilingual identity to promote multilingual teaching practices (MTPs) in English language teaching classrooms. The current study investigates factors that shape Norwegian teachers’ multilingual identity, teachers’ definitions of individual multilingualism, and their self-perceptions of being multilingual. Employing a mixed methods approach, 181 pre-service and in-service teachers in Norway were surveyed and 23 were interviewed. Analyses reveal that language learning, teacher education and professional development (PD) that adopt a reflective approach, and teachers’ use of MTPs are significant factors that shape teacher multilingual identity. The results also show that when defining multilingualism, Norwegian teachers tend to refer to the productive rather than the receptive skills in their linguistic repertoires and that some teachers associate being multilingual only with individuals who are immigrants. Given that teacher multilingual identity can be a driving force in promoting MTPs and can enhance the development of multilingualism in linguistically diverse classrooms, the study calls for an acknowledgment of the value of teacher multilingual identity and for more attention being given to teacher multilingual identity in teacher education and PD.
