Abstract
While the promotion of autochthonous minority languages is a consolidated reality in many South Tyrolean schools, the languages of immigrant minoritised communities still play a minor role in the classroom, and in-service teachers receive little guidance as to the ways in which these linguistic resources can be leveraged as educational capital (Engel and Hoffmann 2016). The aim of this paper is to report on COMPASS (Didactic Competences in the Multilingual Classroom), a two-year professional development initiative that was recently carried out in the Province of Bolzano. The project sought to accompany teams of primary school teachers in adopting increasingly inclusive forms of plurilingual education, i.e. education that acknowledges plurilingual learners’ competences, practices and identities, and empowers them to mobilise their full linguistic repertoires for learning (Cummins 2021; Guarda and Mayr 2023; van Avermaet et al. 2018). Embracing a participatory action research approach whereby transformation in school practices is realised through collaboration between teachers and researchers (McIntyre 2008), the professional development course had a focus on the exploration and collaborative development of instruments and strategies geared towards the principles of pedagogical translanguaging (García 2009). Among the teachers who took part in the initiative, this paper will focus on two colleagues, a teacher of Italian and a teacher of German, who work in the same class and share some teaching hours. Drawing on the analysis of qualitative data gathered throughout the two years of professional development by means of individual semi-structured interviews and visual documentation of classroom work, the paper will highlight how the two teachers’ pedagogical stance (RQ1) and practices (RQ2) developed to embrace more inclusive forms of plurilingual education, while at the same time pinpointing some of the challenges they faced in the process.
References
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