Abstract
Over the last decades, South Tyrolean society has become increasingly complex: alongside historical multilingualism (Italian, German and Ladin) and diglossia, the linguistic and cultural landscape of Italy’s northernmost province has been enriched by languages and varieties brought by recent migration flows (Medda-Windischer and Membretti 2020). Within this context, providing high-quality education to all students also implies catering for the experiences, competences and needs of those whose first languages differ from the main languages of schooling. Yet, research conducted at the local level has shown that the languages of immigrant minoritised communities still play a minor role in the South Tyrolean educational panorama (Engel and Hoffmann 2016; Guarda and Colombo forthcoming), and has advocated for more inclusive and socially just practices so as to meet students’ needs more effectively (Guarda and Mayr forthcoming).
In our talk, we will describe COMPASS (Didactic Competences in the Multilingual Classroom), a research and professional development initiative promoted with the aim of supporting teams of teachers from South Tyrolean primary schools on their way towards increasingly inclusive didactic practices that valorise the linguistic heterogeneity of their classes. Central to the initiative is the promotion of plurilingual education, intended here as any approach in which two or more languages – first, second and/or foreign - are strategically used (van Avermaet et al. 2018) to enhance students’ language and content learning. COMPASS entails two main components, i.e. a two-year professional development course during which the participating teachers are given opportunities to explore issues related to inclusive plurilingual education and to reflect on their own beliefs and teaching practices; and a longitudinal research study aimed at investigating the impact of the professional development course on the participants’ attitudes, knowledge and reported practices. In this talk, we will discuss the preliminary results of the qualitative analysis conducted on data gathered from 41 teachers from the three primary schools that are currently participating in the initiative. The data discussed here were collected through individual interviews prior to the beginning of the professional development course, as well as through focus group interviews conducted at the end of the first training year. Overall, the findings stress the importance of promoting reflexivity through teacher training and pinpoint the difficulties teachers face in adopting truly inclusive didactic practices.
References
Engel, D. and Hoffmann, M. (2016) Zum Umgang mit Sprachenvielfalt an Südtiroler Schulen – Das Südtiroler Kooperationsprojekt “Sprachenvielfalt macht Schule” stellt sich vor. Tagungsband zur XV. Internationale DeutschlehrerInnentagung Bozen, 29.7.-3.8.2013 (IDV). Bolzano/Bozen: Bolzano University Press: 7–21. ISBN 978-88-6064-092-9.
Guarda, M. and Colombo, S. (forthcoming) Plurilingual education through the teachers’ eyes: insights from South Tyrol.
Guarda, M. and Mayr, G. (forthcoming) Responding inclusively to linguistic diversity in the classroom: teachers’ first steps to challenge language hierarchies and reshape the schoolscape.
Medda-Windischer, R. and Membretti, A. (eds.) (2020) Rapporto sulle migrazioni - Alto Adige. Bolzano/Bozen: Eurac Research.
Van Avermaet, P., Slembrouck, S., Van Gorp, K., Sierens, S. and Maryns, K. (2018) Introduction: the multilingual edge of education. In Van Avermaet, P., Slembrouck, S., Van Gorp, K., Sierens, S. and Maryns, K. (eds.) The Multilingual Edge of Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan: 1-6. doi: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54856-6