2018-2020 Students’ Everyday Multilingualism– A Resource for Science Education?

In their everyday lives bilingual students self-evidently use their entire linguistic repertoires which often means more than one language. At school however only the use of a majority language (German in Germany) is recognized as the legitimate language of instruction. Thus, large parts of bilingual students’ linguistic repertoires are excluded from teaching and learning even though they might substantially foster students’ understanding.

The aim of this project is to identify opportunities as well as difficulties associated with bilingual students’ use of their entire linguistic repertoires.

In an ethnographic pilot-study, the perspectives of students on multilingual interactions in physics teaching were surveyed. The study aims at a better understanding of opportunities, challenges or even barriers students face when using their entire linguistic repertoire for learning at school. Next to interview data, videos of multilingual and monolingual interactions of bilingual students will be analyzed to identify further factors that either favor or inhibit the use of bilingual students’ entire linguistic repertoire

This project is conducted in close cooperation with Prof. Dr. Ingrid Gogolin.