Multilingual socialisation in education: Introducing the M-SOC approach

Abstract

This article provides an overview of monolingual norms, which are considered pervasive in education (Ortega, 2014, Cruickshank, 2014; May, 2014) and proposes a multilingual socialisation approach. Various monolingual practices have been observed, recognised and discussed by applied linguists, language educators and socio-linguists for the last 30 plus years (May, 2014; Conteh & Meier, 2014), and have been referred to as “damaging deficit approaches” (Ortega, 2014, p. 32). This has led to a call for collective research action (Ortega, 2014) and for greater teacher guidance (Weber, 2014; Meier, 2017) in order to question monolingual thinking. The theoretical review, here presented, draws on literature related to monolingual norms as well as alternative multilingual approaches, and links these to language socialisation perspectives. The result consists of 96 guiding statements combined in a theory-informed approach that can be used for reflection, practice and research in the field of multilingual socialisation in education. Cognisant of the important role teachers play in their learners’ language socialisation (Friedman, 2010), this article is an invitation for educators and teacher educators to engage with theory, actively join the debates, and participate in a collective international research project based in Exeter. The latter has the aim of developing deeper understandings of what, how, where and why multilingual approaches may work, and equally important what approaches do not work in certain contexts, and why not.

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