Drawing on data from an innovative pedagogic project involving young learners, German student-teachers and MA students at a British university, this paper examines the interplay of identities, belief systems and ideologies as participants engaged in interlinked tasks focused on use of their plurilingual resources. Implications for teacher education are discussed.
Despite decades of research supporting the pedagogic value of learners’ plurilingual resources to linguistic and academic development, teacher-candidates often arrive at university inculcated in ‘target language only’ practices underpinned by monolingual mythologies. The challenge is creating opportunities in teacher education that productively disrupt existing beliefs and foster professional reflection. Using languages is critical to this aim. Use creates value - social activity is not only a context for linguistic development, it also indexes identities, belief systems and ideologies that constrain and enhance language learners’ and teachers’ agency (Douglas Fir Group, 2016; de Costa & Norton, 2017). Yet surprisingly little research in language teacher education investigates the dynamics of plurilingual practice and ideological reification and/or change. This paper addresses the gap by exploring belief systems and cultural values that permeated the lived design of an innovative English-German pedagogic project on plurilingualism. The project involved German student-teachers developing a language portrait project for Grade 6 students; student-teachers using project data for undergraduate assignments; and English MA students interviewing young learners about their language portraits via videoconference. The videoconference provided young learners further opportunities to use their plurilingual resources and MA students with data for assignments on identity and investment. Data includes the language portraits, UG and MA students’ assignments, observations and video of Grade 6 classes and student-teachers’ university seminars, and video and/or audio-recorded interviews with Grade 6 students and student-teachers. Working with DFG’s transdisciplinary framework (2016), we examine the interplay of the meso- and macro-dimensions of the larger project’s design and the sometimes contradictory indexing of values and identities within and across tasks. Analysis reveals that design choices sometimes unintentionally reinforced linguistic ideologies inconsistent with the project’s objectives, though these conflicts also led student-teachers to unexpected insights. We close with personal reflections on the first iteration of this design-based research project.
