Bilinguismo in classe e formazione in servizio: analisi delle attitudini di docenti della scuola del primo ciclo di istruzione

This paper examines teachers' beliefs in the domain of multilingual class management and aims at providing further evidence to the correlation between teachers’ attitudes and in-service training, both in terms of beliefs and teaching practices. The first part of the article outlines the theoretical framework of this work, beginning with the analysis of the Italian guidelines in education policy and teacher training regarding the maintenance and the engagement of immigrant minority students’ heritage languages. I also provide a review of several Italian and international studies in Italy which explored teachers’ attitudes towards multilingualism in the class in relation with professional development opportunities. Subsequently I describe a study carried out in the province of Alessandria starting from the 2018, regarding the relationship between training experiences of teachers of primary and secondary schools and their attitude towards bilingualism and heritage language maintenance. The results showed that specific training and experiences in the field of multilingual education has a positive impact on teachers’ beliefs.