MIKS

Multilingualism is a basic condition in all aspects of school life. The teaching of German as a second and academic language is an important task in this context. In addition, all other languages that children bring with them to school are a resource that can be used for learning. When children are encouraged to make use of their home languages during lessons, it can be beneficial for everyone involved. The school’s job of teaching and providing support in German can be meaningfully complemented by including children’s multilingual experiences. With this in mind, this project developed, tested and scientifically evaluated a concept for teacher professionalisation and school development. The leading research question was: How can primary school staff be successfully supported to recognise the multilingualism in their own school as a resource and to use it productively for language teaching and formal learning?

Carried out over period of 1.5 years in three primary schools, the measure included the transfer of knowledge (psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic foundations), trial phases during lessons (via the implementation of multilingual teaching approaches by staff), and guided reflection exercises on the experiences and beliefs of participating staff. Staff were thereby supported in integrating constructive approaches to multilingualism into their normal school routines.

In the three primary schools, lessons were observed and interviews carried out with teachers and principals. Field notes were taken during internal training sessions and reflection days in the schools. In order to capture the effects of the measure, questionnaire surveys were conducted prior to and after the intervention. Staff from the three project schools, as well as from three comparison schools, were surveyed. The survey focused on knowledge, beliefs and strategies for action in the field of language education and multilingualism.

Innovation is most likely to take place when all those involved have new and positive experiences with multilingualism at school and in the classroom. Such experiences were had during practical projects that participating staff teams developed and tested themselves, such as multilingual signage around the school and in classrooms, multilingual word collections and language comparisons.

In addition, a number of quality criteria concerning the content and methods of a professionalisation and school development concept to incorporate migration-related multilingualism in schools and the classroom also emerged in this intervention study:

• Teaching and support staff can understand the effects of multilingual socialisation on the linguistic, cognitive and socio-emotional development of children and adolescents from a psycho- and neurolinguistic perspective.
• Working on an overall language concept for the school brings together different areas of language education: multilingual didactics, the teaching of German as a second and academic language, literacy teaching, heritage language teaching and foreign languages.
• Strategies for school and lesson development facilitate the institutionalisation of long-term plans for the inclusion of multilingualism in school and in the classroom.

Even small steps in school and lesson development can lead to new practical experiences in schools. Together with pupils and parents, the staff teams in this project made family languages visible and audible throughout their schools. The teachers also tested new practical approaches in their lessons, taking into consideration languages that they them- selves do not understand. The teachers’ sense of self-efficacy in the field of multilingualism rose considerably in the project schools, leading them to believe in their ability to include and deal with pupils’ languages in a constructive way.

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