Student teachers’ thoughts on promoting metalinguistic awareness through pluralistic approaches. A mixed method study

Abstract

This study is intended to shed light on teacher students’ thoughts about including pluralistic approaches to build metalinguistic awareness in their pupils, in their future careers as English teachers in Norway. Previous studies show that both teachers and teacher students lack knowledge about multilingualism and teaching in a multilingual classroom. A lack of focus on these topics in teacher education might be to blame for this, and needs to be addressed, as multilingualism is becoming increasingly relevant with the new national curriculum placing a larger emphasis on this that the previous. Pluralistic approaches are ways to teach language that includes more than one language. Done correctly, this will foster metalinguistic awareness, which in turn will aid in language acquisition. There are also certain aspects of metalinguistic awareness that can only be unlocked through pluralistic approaches. A majority of teacher students do wish to include consider certain pluralistic approaches and consider metalinguistic skills that can only be taught through such an approach as important. However, most of them do not seem to be consciously aware of the link between MLA and multilingualism, and their thoughts about including other languages stem from a wish to validate pupils with L1s other than Norwegian, rather than for language learning itself. A few students also hold ideas about teaching English in a monolingual approach, which is not at all compatible with the objective of the English subject in Norway. These are notions that will subconsciously inform their teaching in the future if the teacher education does not intervene.