Teachers' beliefs in multilingual education in the Basque country and in Friesland

  1. Elizabet Arocena Egaña
  2. Miren Jasone Cenoz Iragui
  3. Durk Gorter
Revista:
Journal of immersion and content-based language education

ISSN: 2212-8433

Año de publicación: 2015

Volumen: 3

Número: 2

Páginas: 169-193

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.1075/JICB.3.2.01ARO DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Otras publicaciones en: Journal of immersion and content-based language education

Objetivos de desarrollo sostenible

Resumen

In this article we analyze teachers’ beliefs about learning different languages in multilingual education, which include forms of immersion in the minority and the majority languages. In this study interviews were held with 51 primary school teachers from the Basque Country (Spain), and Friesland (The Netherlands). In both regions three languages are taught: majority, minority and English. Based on the teachers’ views we obtain interesting insights into the native speaker ideal, pupils as multilingual speakers, and the proficiency levels for each language. The teachers also expressed their ideas on teaching through the minority language and through English, as well as their beliefs on cross-linguistic use of languages and how that is related to the multilingual repertoire. The social context is believed to have an important influence through the parents, the media, and the status of the languages in society. The article concludes that beliefs are still largely monolingual and seem to only gradually change to more multilingual views.