Chapter 5 Insights into Contemporary Multilingual and Intercultural Teaching Practices from the Perspective of Secondary School Learners in Austria
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Abstract
Today’s societies and classrooms are characterized by linguistic and cultural diversity. To do adequate justice to the growing plurality among learners, scholars have proposed teaching approaches (e.g. Kirsch and Duarte, 2020) described recommendations for an improved educational practice (e.g. Fäcke and Meißner, 2019) or voiced desiderata to regard in-class diversity as a resource (e.g. Civitillo et al., 2019). In Austria, multilingualism and intercultural education have constituted fundamental, interdisciplinary didactic principles for 30 years (BMBWF, 2022). Despite the global attention to multilingualism and interculturality and the embedding of these constructs in national and international curricula, however, there is a lack of data on their implementation in contemporary teaching practice. Thus, this chapter investigates secondary school students’ views on multilingual and intercultural teaching, combining interview data from 18 upper secondary learners and survey data from 42 lower secondary students. The findings reveal shortcomings in classroom practice and emphasize the need for improved teacher training, which should enhance educators’ awareness of the value of learners’ multilingual and intercultural resources and assist teachers in effectively implementing related approaches.