This book addresses contemporary issues in the assessment of plurilingual competence and plurilingual learners. Offering theoretical and practical lenses, it contributes towards an integrated and holistic assessment of plurilingual competence and plurilingual learners. The book provides both theoretical considerations and empirical approaches around how the specificities of plurilingual learners can be considered when assessing their various competences. It covers topics relating to learners in a variety of plurilingual settings: from the education of adult immigrants, assessment of young refugees and assessment of students in school and university, to the assessment of plurilingual competence in foreign language education. Showcasing a wide range of international authors, the book provides cutting-edge research in the domain of multilingual foreign, second and heritage language assessment, and assessment of content knowledge of plurilingual students. It bridges the gap between the fields of language policies and practices, research on plurilingual competence, and assessment in language education. Providing new insights into a crucial and contentious issue, this volume will be an essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of educational language policies, applied linguistics and multilingualism, in particular those involved in the assessment of plurilingual competence.

Our evolving understanding of the role of English as a lingua franca and our growing sensitivity to the unique needs of students and teachers who communicate across languages and cultures has led to significant changes in language teaching, pedagogy, and curriculum design. The Handbook of Plurilingual and Intercultural Language Learning is a field-defining book, which examines the various ways learners learn and acquire language in a truly global context. Featuring contributions from a diverse range of scholars reflecting different cultural, linguistic, regional, and ideological perspectives, this innovative volume presents the most recent developments in the field while revealing the nuances and complexities of teaching and learning foreign languages. This Handbook explains the conceptual basis of intercultural and plurilingual learning, describes core pedagogical concepts, discusses different learning and teaching approaches, and provides the historical background for various methods and theories. The authors discuss how policy and pedagogy can adapt to the shifting demographics of local student populations, address new trends and evolving themes, and explore contemporary topics such as translanguaging, intercomprehension, technology-enhanced learning, language policy, and more. The Handbook of Plurilingual and Intercultural Language Learning is essential reading for students, educators, and researchers in applied linguistics, language teaching and learning, plurilingualism/multilingualism, TESOL, cognitive linguistics, language policy, language acquisition, and intercultural communication.

This book fosters an awareness of multilingualism as lived or as subjectively experienced from the perspective of those involved in language education and teacher education. Responding to multilingual and visual turns, it widens the repertoire of methodologies dominating the field of language teacher education, from linguistic or verbal to visual. The chapters, written by practising language teachers and teacher educators, explore aspects of multilingualism accessed through visual means in a wide range of contexts. Using social justice as a transformative framework, they highlight the biases, inequalities and linguistic hierarchies within schools and teacher education, and promote respect for linguistic plurality and cultural diversity in these settings. They illustrate how visual methods can be used to reconstruct histories of individual multilingualism, identify present language ideologies and support teachers’ professional development by means of envisioning the future self in action. This book will be of interest to those involved in language education and language teacher education, including researchers, practising language teachers, student or trainee teachers and teacher educators. This book is Open Access under a CC BY NC ND license.

Traditionally, teachers of majority languages receive less training to teach a language as a second language or to develop the plurilingual repertoire of their learners than, for example, foreign language teachers. Yet, in today's societies, learners bring many different languages to school. This means that the teaching of the majority language has to extend beyond teaching it as a first language and adopt elements of second language teaching. This publication aims to encourage teachers to become agents of reform for the promotion of plurilingualism in majority language teaching. The range of proposed actions includes small-scale activities, such as planning a lesson relating to a specific aspect of grammar which incorporates all languages spoken in the classroom. More comprehensive strategic approaches proposed in the materials involve head teachers or parents.

Multilingual Approaches for Teaching and Learning outlines the opportunities and challenges of multilingual approaches in mainstream education in Europe. The book, which draws on research findings from several officially monolingual, bilingual, and multilingual countries in Europe, discusses approaches to multilingual education which capitalise on students’ multilingual resources from early childhood to higher education. This book synthesises research on multilingual education, relates theory to practice, and discusses different pedagogical approaches from diverse perspectives. The first section of the book outlines multilingual approaches in early childhood education and primary school, the second looks at multilingual approaches in secondary school and higher education, and the third examines the influence of parents, policy-makers, and professional development on the implementation and sustainability of multilingual approaches. The book demonstrates that educators can leverage students’ multilingualism to promote learning and help students achieve their full potential. This book will be of great interest to academics, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of language education, psychology, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics.

Building the Self-Efficacy Beliefs of English Language Learners and Teachers explores, juxtaposes and bridges two fields of research that have developed separately: the self-efficacy beliefs of English language learners and the self-efficacy beliefs of English language teachers. The aim is to expand understanding in each field and highlight how the two areas can mutually inform each other. This should encourage fresh perspectives, providing direction for researchers, and improving learning, teaching, and teacher education. Empirical research suggests that English language learners and teachers who believe they can fulfil a task are more likely to succeed than those who believe they cannot. Based on a deep understanding of how self-efficacy beliefs are formed and developed, this book illustrates how such beliefs can be supported and researched amongst English language learners and teachers. Bringing together the work of educators and researchers working in contexts including Algeria, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Iran, Israel, Japan, Türkiye, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam, this volume includes meta-analyses largely focusing on quantitative data and empirical studies employing qualitative approaches and mixed methods. Studies included examine factors impacting the development of language teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs and investigate domain-specific dimensions of the self-efficacy beliefs of English language learners and teachers. This rigorous and original volume will appeal to an international readership of scholars, teachers, teacher educators, and researchers with interests in language education, teacher education, TESOL, linguistics, and educational psychology.

The Routledge Handbook of Plurilingual Language Education is the first comprehensive publication on plurilingualism, offering a multidimensional reflection on the nature, scope, and potential of plurilingualism in language education and society. Authored by a range of internationally recognized experts, the Handbook provides an overview of key perspectives on plurilingualism in a complementary range of fields. After a comprehensive introduction to the concept itself, 24 chapters are organized in six parts, each examining plurilingualism through a different lens. The Handbook spans historical, philosophical, and sociological dimensions, examines cognitive and neuroscientific implications, and the limitations of boundaries before moving to a pragmatic perspective: How is plurilingual language education developing in different contexts around the world? How can it contribute to language revitalization? How can it be expected to develop in education, digital spaces, and society as a whole? Written for an international audience, this handbook is an indispensable reference tool for scholars in education and applied linguistics, educators, graduate and post-graduate students, and policy makers.

This book presents ecological perspectives towards early language education that conceptualise the phenomenon of interactions between child language-based agency, teachers’ agency, peers’ agency and parents’ agency, consequently furthering insights into the lives of young children growing up in multilingual homes. Drawing on rich empirical research evidence, the book explores teachers’ and family strategies and practices aimed at enhancing children’s interest in home language maintenance and enrichment as well as in the novel language learning. It defines early language education as the education of children up to the age of 6 and considers international evidence of children’s language from diverse sociolinguistic backgrounds and indigenous, endangered, heritage, regional, minority, majority, and marginalized languages, as well as foreign and second languages in education at home and out-of-home settings. It claims that only through collaboration between teachers, families, peers, and close environment, can the child be engaged in early language learning and fully experience his or her potential to act as agent in a novel language learning. The book will be of great interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields of language education, multilingualism, applied linguistics, and early childhood education. Practitioners in these fields may also find the volume a valuable resource.