The hidden potential of multilingual teachers in schools: pre-service teacher perspectivesROBYN MOLONEY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, FACULTY OF HUMAN SCIENCES

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Teaching: a transnational globalized profession, internationally valuing teachers with intercultural and multilingual skills. Opposing localization in teacher education programs:“Training in how to teach a local educational jurisdiction's curriculum and how to comply with its accountability systems” (Mayer, Luke & Luke, 2008)

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Globalisation : Cultural and linguistic diversity in schools - teacher skills, attitudes, inclusive practice, multiliteracies. Our intercultural pedagogy recognising student perspectives…But- how does a cohort of undergrad pre-service teachers see the Standard “know your students” modelled in a uni program?

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2013 survey of undergrad cohort in Education dept: over 80% born in Australia, nearly a third spoke a non-English language. Matches the average 30% (+) representation of LBOTE students in classrooms.

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Graduates must achieve the AITSL Graduate Teacher Standards: hierarchy of cultural and social capital in teacher profiles. Multilingual competence does not appear on standards. No recognition in university data.

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November 2014: 15 volunteer interviews: 3 male. 8 born in Australia. 8 primary, 7 secondary. (teaching History, English, Society & Culture, Mathematics, Computing, Languages, ESL)10 bilingual, 5 multilingual

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languages : Arabic, Malay, Mandarin, Indonesian, Spanish, Korean, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, French, German, Vietnamese, a Chinese dialect, Farsi, Armenian, Japanese, Urdu, Uzbeki, Dari (Afghan), Hindi, Pashtun (Afghan), Maltese, Italian and Turkish.

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Victor, in addition to knowledge of French and German, daily uses Russian, Serbian and English. He speaks Serbian with his wife, and is trying to raise his children multilingually by using several languages with them. His children attend Russian community school on Saturdays and Serbian community school on Sundays.  Jacinta speaks with her family in Dari and her husband in Pashtun, Dari and English. Jacinta owns her linguistic profile as somewhat ‘unique’ and became proud of her language knowledge when she realised that not everyone in Australia spoke multiple languages.

 

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Nicole speaks Farsi and Armenian at home with her parents. Nicole was born in Australia, and attended Armenian Saturday school until year 9. Nicole feels like she lives in 'two worlds'. When visiting Iran, she feels like an 'outsider' and when in Australia, she 'definitely feels Australian', but she feels 'very proud' of her background.

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In personal life, strong robust bilingual identities: language represents 'family, communication and emotion'.Child-rearing, family communication, shopping, consumption of media, and social interaction. Some experienced difficulty acquiring English as children, which endured as insecurity in their English communication

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Tertiary education? linguistic ability irrelevant, received very little or no recognition within their Education degree (9/15). Very few tutors enquired re different cultural perspectives, or checked for understanding. the interview was the first time it had been raised

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What we preach : for quality learning, it is important to engage the subjectivities of all classroom learners. They do not see it modelled in their own tertiary class.

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10/15 felt their language skills could or should be recognised in their university education. Their skills could be exploited more in tutorials as a learning resource to diversify discussion, and offer richer perspectives, and to include their subjectivities.

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They recalled limited monolingual students’ responses to tasks: identified that monolingual peers were operating from a “limited base of knowledge about culture and identity”.(Cockrell et al, 1999, p. 360)  

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Tertiary education not enabling them to create any connections between their plurilingual abilities and their skills and identities as beginner teachers (Santoro, 2013).

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School practicum teaching? Pivotal in PST’s early perceptions of their role (Le Cornu & Ewing, 2008) and sense of membership in their professional community.

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7/15 small positive experiences of using language. 4 /15 validating experience. Anna and Pakistani student. Jacinta and recent arrival Iranian student, asked to communicate with parents. Trudy drew on common cultural knowledge when teaching

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‘Miss, what's your nash?' students hoping that the teachers would be 'non-Anglo', like themselves, in order to be full members of their learning community. “some potential for teacher and kids to construct ideas about language and culture together”

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Negative experiences: 3 hid their multilingual ability in a monolingual school:'out of place', ‘have to fit in’, 'not being like everyone else' an 'invisible wall' between her and the school community

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An unwelcome persona? Victor: to 'stay professional' he should not say too much about his cultural background, was subject to an incident of verbal abuse from a group of students regarding his nationality

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“'I feel people judge me because I know other languages. I feel I would be more sought after if I only spoke English”. The monolingual mindset of some schools is acting as an impediment to these PSTs’ plurilingual potential (Clyne, 2008).

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They believe they can contribute to student wellbeing and success: 1.capacity for empathy ESL learners. 2. enhanced cultural / values awareness3. meta-linguistic awareness, communication

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3/15 future role, responsibility to model language as exciting engagement with the world and intercultural learning. “new languages teach new values and understandings”. Claudia must “teach that having another language is okay”, and that children need to embrace and share it.

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1. Monolingual mindset shapes Teacher Standards 2. University curriculum /pedagogy devalues linguistic diversity3. monolingual schools and teachers who devalue linguistic diversity. All parts of this cycle need attention.

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So what for languages teachers? Do you know which teachers on your staff have a non-English language? Can you raise the significance of their abilities? To students, to school culture? To you?

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Potential to be partners with languages teachers

Raise the profile of languages and cultures within a school

Are they potential CLIL teachers, being able to teach curriculum content in a second language?

Recognise the role that multilingual colleagues can play in supporting student learning outcomes in schools.

Multilingual teachers’ skills must be visible and valued, and can be active agents in achieving shift in attitudes to language diversity in schools