Exploring factors influencing the pedagogical and linguistic choices of teachers in multilingual classrooms: a cross-country quantitative analysis

• In Event: Highlighted Session: New theoretical and empirical contributions to the politics of language in education: Understanding policy change and local appropriation in Africa

Proposal

Centralized policies and school administrators dictate the curriculum, pedagogical approaches, and language(s) that should be used in classrooms. However, teachers are ultimately responsible for the implementation of these policies. As such, they are the street-level bureaucrats (Lipsky, 1969) of formal education systems. The decisions teachers make are informed by official policies, and mediated by their beliefs, skills or perceived skills, and the school conditions that enable or hinder specific language choices (de Galbert & Gulere, 2023). Indeed, teachers decide whether to use the prescribed language(s) based on their own language skills (Cincotta‐Segi, 2011) or that of their students (Reddick & Chopra, 2021). A better understanding of the factors most important in enabling teachers to appropriate (or reject) language policies can help improve policy implementation and student experiences.

The final presentation will build on the qualitative research on teacher appropriation of language in education policy presented in the previous paper, drawing upon quantitative data. This paper will explore the factors associated with variation in teacher behaviors. Specifically, the study will seek to answer the following questions: (i) What is the relationship between teacher attitudes, motivation, and language skills and their classroom behavior? (ii) What is the relationship between classroom enabling environment and teacher behavior?

The main outcomes measuring teacher classroom behavior are taken from the LITES quantitative sample of 60 schools per country, randomly selected from within two different language regions (in most contexts), and 120 teachers (2 per school, one 3rd grade and one 4th grade) in each of 6 countries. Data derive from two sources, teacher surveys and direct observations of those same teachers’ behavior in classrooms, including estimates of their language use in classrooms and particular pedagogical strategies (e.g., code-switching). Data is analyzed at the country-level and then compared cross-nationally, and is ongoing at the time of submission. We plan to use inferential statistics to identify relationships between variables of interest and test particular theories.

For the first research question, predictors will come from a novel set of scales developed for the LITES study that include: teacher attitudes and motivation related to languages of instruction, multilingual learning; teachers' sense of self-efficacy; and teachers’ language and literacy abilities in different languages. For the second question, observations or measurement of the presence or absence of different enabling conditions, including teachers’ levels of training, the presence of TLMs in different languages, among other factors.


Cincotta‐Segi, A. (2011). Talking in, talking around and talking about the L2: Three literacy teaching responses to L2 medium of instruction in the Lao PDR. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 41(2), 195–209. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2011.547285

de Galbert, P. G., & Gulere, C. (2023). Multilingual Teachers for the Multilingual Classroom. In A. C. Hager-M’boua & F. Jaumont (Eds.), A Bilingual Revolution for Africa. CALEC - TBR Books.

Lipsky, M. (1969). Toward a theory of street-level bureaucracy. Institute for Research on Poverty, University of Wisconsin.
Reddick, C., & Chopra, V. (2021). Language considerations in refugee education: Languages for opportunity, connection, and roots. Language and Education.

Author

• Pierre de Galbert, Brown University