Abstract
Social institutions such as schooling play a vital role in the formation of social cohesion. However, since institutions only exist as long as individual social agents align their actions to the norms, aims and social order that characterize institutional settings, they are open to change. Adopting a sociocultural perspective on agency, the chapter explores how students “negotiate and create their world and ‘social order’” (Duff & Doherty 2015: 57). The mixed-methods study, conducted over 3 years, followed eight classes in the officially trilingual region of South Tyrol (Italy) during their lower secondary school years. Drawing on student questionnaires, essays, semi-structured teacher interviews, and in-class observations, the analysis investigates how students’ perspectives on languages in education evolve over time, emphasizing students’ discursive agency, understood as their socio-culturally mediated capacity to express opinions in semi-public discourse. The chapter furthermore traces the influence of teaching practices on students’ viewpoints, which either align with dominant discourses and accept institutional structures that promote linguistic homogeneity as a prerequisite for social cohesion or challenge them. Students adopting the latter approach emerge as agents of change, proposing alternative perspectives on languages in education that extend beyond existing institutionalized practices and advocate for linguistic diversity – thus supporting the idea of unity in diversity.