Visualising interaction in multilingual situations: what do pre service teachers think?

This communication reports on a study that examines beliefs systems held by pre service teachers with regard to interaction in multilingual elementary classrooms. The focus on interaction is relevant because national curriculums are based on communicative approaches to language learning, and multilingualism is one of the challenges of the societies in the twenty-first century. The design of this study will allow the research team - all teacher educators - to gain an in-depth understanding of future teachers' belief systems by analysing data (N=75) from students of the Elementary and Primary Education degree at the University of Barcelona. Data was collected in the 2018-2019 academic year, at the beginning of different courses, both in the first and the second semesters. The students were asked to produce two visual narratives, each one complemented with written comments, in response to a two-part task. While in part A of the task the focus was on representing a multilingual situation in general, in part B the participants were asked to represent themselves as teachers in a multilingual situation at school. The way trainees conceive both interaction and multilingualism will have an impact on their approach to teaching and learning. Early results indicate a certain perception of both multilingual situations and plurilingual compentence based on stereotypes, which is of concern, because this competence is fundamental, specifically evaluated in all primary schools in Catalonia at the end of each academic year. Initial results also show a limited understanding of the communicative approach to language teaching. This could invariably affect the quality of interaction in all languages present in schools.