Multilingual Pedagogies in Teaching English as a Foreign Language: Practices and Teachers’ Beliefs in Superdiverse Schools

Research on multilingual pedagogies has demonstrated that acknowledging and validating linguistic diversity in the classroom enhances learners’ metalinguistic awareness and has a positive impact on emergent bilinguals’ literacy outcomes. The multilingual turn in language education is also enriching the academic debate in the field of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), where the focus on linguistic diversity may enable teachers to explore the varieties of English. Drawing from qualitative content analysis of a corpus of interviews conducted with seven EFL teachers, as well as classroom observations and video recordings of lessons in six EFL classrooms of Italian public schools, this study investigates the perspectives and instructional strategies employed by teachers in relation to the integration of multilingual pedagogies in the context of EFL instruction. The findings of the study indicate that teachers commonly promote the use of different varieties of English among their students. However, the scarcity of resources hinders a deep exploration of English’s pluricentric nature. Moreover, educators commonly perceive multilingual pedagogies as suitable for the EFL classroom, as they provide a useful setting to incorporate metalinguistic reflections on language similarities and differences into their instructional strategies.