Multilingual socialisation in education (M-SOC): educator engagement and potential for collective action

Abstract

The linguistic choices teachers and educators make in their spheres of influence depend on their own language experiences and how these have shaped their thinking. In this article, we draw on teacher beliefs, social activism and language socialisation perspectives to demonstrate the potential impact of the Multilingual Socialisation (M-SOC) tool. This theory-informed tool was designed to: (1) make visible multilingual practices where they exist; (2) establish a link between biographical experiences, actions and beliefs related to multilingual practices in education; and (3) expose educators less familiar with multilingualism in education to practical ideas, thus enabling reflection and inspiration. This is part of a potentially wider collective action project that has the aim of generating greater acceptance of multilingual practices in education. Here, we present and evaluate the first stage of the M-SOC project and a follow-on consultation phase and draw conclusions for future research. The quantitative and qualitative analyses of the first results (n = 81) from our ongoing data collection indicate that the M-SOC tool has a role to play as an effective theory-informed teacher development tool that is able to identify, inform and change teachers’ thinking and intentions regarding their classroom practices.