POLICIES FOR PLURILINGUAL EDUCATION AND FL TEACHING IN THREE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES: A COMPARATIVE ACCOUNT OF TEACHERS’ VIEWS

Abstract

The study was conducted to provide a comparative account of teachers’ beliefs on plurilingual learning in three diverse European educational contexts: the Greek, Cypriot and Bulgarian one. Its objectives were to: i) specify teachers’ perceptions of key issues on plurilingual Education Policy, ii) identify their attitudes to English as a lingua franca and to early foreign language learning, iii) record their suggestions about further developing plurilingual education. 150 state primary school teachers participated in the study; 50 from each educational context. Semi-structured interviews were used, comprising the following sections: a) conceptualization of multilingualism, b) status of European languages c) introduction of foreign languages in early stages of education, d) suggestions about the development of multilingual education. The findings indicated the teachers’ overall positive attitudes towards issues of plurilingual policies and revealed the teachers’ acknowledgement of the benefits from plurilingualism and early foreign language learning.

Keywords

• Plurilingualism
• plurilingual education
• plurilingual policies
• comparative account
• teachers’ beliefs

Kaynakça

1. Panteli, P., Griva, E., & Tsakiridou, E. (2013). Plurilingualism in the Cypriot Educational System: A record of primary school students’ views and attitudes. MAJESS journal, 1, 61-71.
2. Patev, P., & Stefanova P. (1993) Vhodno-izhodno ravnishte na uchebnia predmet ‘Chyzhd Ezik’ v balgarskoto nachalno uchilishte, v spisanie ‘Chuzdoezikovo obuchenie’ kn.4, The 'Foreign Language' subject input-output threshold for the Bulgarian schools, Foreign Language Teaching journal, 4 . Woods, D. (1996). Teacher cognition in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.