Preparing Teachers to Work with Multilingual Learners

This collection examines a diverse range of approaches to multilingualism in teacher education programmes across Europe and North America. The authors investigate how pre-service teachers are being prepared to work in multilingual contexts and discuss the key features of current pre-service teacher education initiatives that address the increasing linguistic and cultural diversity evident in classrooms in their respective countries. The focus is not only on migrant-background learners but includes students from Indigenous, autochthonous and heritage language backgrounds, and speakers of minoritised regional varieties. The chapters contextualise, both historically and ideologically, the specific initiatives and measures taken in the participating countries. They also reveal the complexity of each educational context and the role that history, language policies and institutional and programmatic priorities play in the development and implementation of a multilingual focus in teacher education. In exploring how pre-service teachers are being prepared to work in multilingual contexts, the authors take a critical view of how multilingualism itself is conceptualised within and across contexts. The book highlights the valuable impact that explicit instruction on theories of multilingualism, pedagogies in multilingual classrooms and lived realities of multilingual children can have on the beliefs and practices of pre-service teachers.

Meike Wernicke is Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia, Canada, with a research focus in French second language teacher education, professional development and teacher identity. Her research also includes an interest in intercultural education, multilingual pedagogies, language policy, and decolonizing approaches in language education.

Svenja Hammer is Postdoctoral Researcher and Lecturer at the Institute for Multilingualism, Language Development and Language Education at the Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. She is engaged in several teacher preparation courses at her university and at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, as well as in the International Consortium for Multilingual Excellence in Education project.

Antje Hansen is Research Assistant at the Coordination Office for Multilingualism and Language Education at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her research interests focus on multilingualism and language education in Germany, heritage language education, factors of successful multilingualism and transfer of research results into practice.

Tobias Schroedler is Junior Professor of Multilingualism and Social Inclusion at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. He has published on different aspects of multilingualism and his research interests include multilingualism in teacher education, institutional multilingualism, language education and language economics.