Abstract
With linguistic diversity now being the norm in many schools, guaranteeing equitable learning opportunities for all students also implies catering for the knowledge, competences and identities of those whose first home languages differ from the main languages of schooling (Cummins 2021). While South Tyrolean schools can count on a wealth of experience in the promotion of autochthonous minority languages, the languages of immigrant minoritised communities still play a minor role in the educational panorama (Engel and Hoffmann 2016). Research conducted at the local level (e.g. Guarda and Mayr 2023) has thus advocated for more inclusive and socially just practices that acknowledge and mobilise students’ full linguistic repertoires for learning.
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/Bozen within the scopes of the “One school, many languages / A lezione con più lingue / Sprachenvielfalt macht Schule SMS 2.0” project. The initiative sought to accompany teams of primary school teachers in adopting increasingly inclusive forms of plurilingual education. Embracing a participatory action research approach (Macdonald 2012) whereby educational change is brought about through collaboration between teachers and researchers, the COMPASS initiative had a focus on the exploration and collaborative development of instruments and strategies geared towards the principles of pedagogical translanguaging (García 2009). Among the schools that took part in COMPASS, this paper will focus on one teacher team working at a small school in the Province of Bolzano/Bozen. The team consisted of 8 professionals teaching a variety of subjects (from Italian, German and English to mathematics, history, geography, science, arts and physical education) in grades 1 to 5. Data was gathered throughout the two years of professional development by means of pre-intervention individual semi-structured interviews, two focus groups with the participants and visual documentation of classroom work. Drawing on the thematic analysis of qualitative data, the paper will highlight and exemplify how the teacher team adapted their pedagogical stance, choices and practices in order to embrace linguistic diversity as educational capital. The discussion will also shed light on the professional challenges that the team experienced in the process, and suggest possible ways of overcoming them.