For many young learners in Europe who are raised in complex multicultural environments, multilingualism is a way of life. Yet today, it is still a challenge to change school policies and practices that are often framed around monolingualism, and which may not recognise the strengths and needs of multilingualism.

However, an increased focus on multilingual education and diversity is driven in large part by:

• Growing mobility between European countries and newcomers to Europe who bring languages into new contexts.
• Changing educational and labour market demands that favour multilingual people.
• Increased linguistic diversity in classrooms throughout Europe.
• Existence of regional and minority languages in many countries. 

Here you will find a selection of approaches taken in projects that promote multilingualism and support teachers in dealing with increasingly multicultural schools across Europe.

Citizenship, awareness, and responsibility

At this turning point in European and world history, a vital question for secondary teachers of all subjects is how to produce active, engaged future citizens who respect each other, appreciate diversity and sustainability, and understand how to work collaboratively across cultures and contexts towards UNESCO’s Sustainable Development Goals.

The Erasmus+ Global Citizenship and Multilingual Competences (GCMC) toolkit is a project that aims to enable teachers to integrate global citizenship goals and plurilingual pedagogies into their teaching practices in a sustainable way, no matter what subject they teach.

The project has produced a self-reflection tool for teacher competences, an online professional development course and toolkit, and a manual for educators.

Normalising multilingualism

It is estimated that a majority of the population in large Dutch cities speak a language other than Dutch on a daily basis. An analysis by the Rutu Foundation in the Netherlands expressed concern that some pupils and parents were being restricted from or punished for speaking their home languages in school. It recommended that schools take measures to expand teacher training on the benefits of multilingualism in education.

Amsterdam’s city council recently approved a policy proposal that multilingualism should become the norm in city schools, in order to:

• Combat linguistic disadvantages,
• Give pupils more self-confidence in their abilities,
• Give parents more opportunities to get involved in their child’s education,
• Ensure that teachers see multilingualism at school as an asset.

Teachers and parents working together

The Erasmus+ AVIOR project aimed to improve the basic numeracy and literacy skills of migrant children in Europe, and produced a handbook for teachers with support materials for working with children with a migrant background, and for when there are multiple home languages in the classroom. A crucial aspect of this project was strengthening the relationships between multilingual parents and schools.

Creativity and cognition

The MultiMind project is a research and training platform funded by the EU’s Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme. The project conducted interdisciplinary research into the influence of multilingualism on learning, cognition, and creativity. The research included five areas of focus:

1. Language learning, cognition, and creativity
2. Language processing and the multilingual brain
3. Multilingual cognition and society
4. Language impairment in multilingual children
5. Multilingualism in migration and refugee settings

The project has produced multiple training courses and conferences and scientific and policy publications with applications in language teaching, educational policy-making, health and education services, and migrant and refugee education and integration.

Mobility, inclusion, and language policy design

The core assumption of the MIME project, a European Commission-funded research project on multilingualism in Europe, is that ‘mobility’ and ‘inclusion’ are not incompatible, but that they do not necessarily converge. As a result, societies and citizens are often faced with a trade-off between the two concepts. The project identifies, assesses, and recommends measures to manage and integrate policies relating to these potentially conflicting goals.

The MIME Vademecum is a collection of 72 questions on multilingualism produced by the MIME project that offers an innovative approach to language policy selection and design. It combines ten disciplines and integrates language concepts that are usually considered separately.