Abstract
The school system in the Ladin valleys of South Tyrol represents one of the few multilingual educational systems in the European Union. Instruction is officially provided in three languages—Ladin, German, and Italian— reflecting thus the linguistic panorama of the territory. The trilingual model seeks to foster balanced competences through alternating the language of instruction in different subjects. Within this multilingual system the distribution of the three languages follows a structured pattern: in primary education, pupils adopt the language used by the teacher, whereas in secondary education both teaching and student participation occur in the language assigned to each subject. This structure sees classroom practices often compartmentalized and students’ full language repertoire risk being underused or rendered invisible at school (De Angelis 2021).
Based on quantitative and qualitative evidence from two projects, this presentation examines students’ plurilingual language use and practices in educational context, and investigates whether their plurilingual practices are reflected in school life, while exploring teachers’ practices regarding multilingual education. The COMPLeTT project (2023 – 2029) is carried out in the Ladin lower secondary schools and investigates students’ language use and competences, focusing on how they mobilize their linguistic repertoires in educational contexts. The SMS 2.0 project (2019 – 2025) aims at investigating how linguistic diversity is perceived, dealt with and leveraged in schools of the three language groups and across all school levels, and has a specific focus on developing teachers’ competences for plurilingual education. In the former data were collected by means of three written productions and an online questionnaire, whose aim was to gather information on the language use (Blommaert 2010) and language repertoires of students. In the latter, the research group carried out an explorative cross-sectional study in 2021 to capture if and how teachers address the linguistic diversity of their students by promoting multilingual teaching activities in class.
In COMPLeTT the preliminary analysis of the quantitative data suggests that the school environment is the context in which students make the most limited use of their linguistic repertoires, compared to other domains such as the family sphere or the interactions with friends outside school. This finding emerges despite the teachers’ declared efforts to promote and valorize linguistic diversity, as evidenced by data from the SMS 2.0 study (Guarda, Colombo, Flarer 2022) and contrasts with the preliminary findings from the analysis of students’ written productions, evaluated using descriptors from the Companion Volume of the CEFR (2018). The analysis of the written texts shows that students could make use of their full repertoires and competences and are able, when required, to interpret texts in unfamiliar or unknown languages and to draw on their full linguistic resources.
The presentation focuses on the findings that reveal a discrepancy between the officially trilingual system in force in the Ladin schools and the plurilingual practices of their students. Classroom communication practices remain structured whereas students display flexible and integrated language practices. Teachers show positive attitudes toward multilingualism and increasing efforts to foster cross-linguistic awareness, though institutional constraints still hinder full implementation. Recognizing and valuing the plurilingual features evident in students’ productions can foster greater linguistic confidence, metalinguistic reflection, and equitable assessment practices.