Preservice and Inservice Teachers’ Language Ideologies About Non-Spanish-speaking Students and Multilingualism in Chilean Classrooms

This paper describes a study exploring in-service insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(IS); and pre-service insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(PS); teachers’ language ideologies about non-Spanish-speaking students’ multilingualism in Chilean classrooms. A survey was answered by 69 IS teachers and 34 PS teachers in the Chilean school system. Both groups were asked about two dimensions: insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(a); teachers’ knowledge and training in L2 pedagogies and their ideologies about students’ L1 and multilingualism; and insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(b); immigrant students’ access and integration into Chilean schools. We focused on dimension insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(a);; the results indicate that the teachers from the IS and PS groups do not consider that students’ L1 is an impediment to the acquisition of the target language. They declare that the preservation of the L1 boosts non-Spanish-speaking students’ self-esteem and can help them to acquire new linguistic knowledge. However, the results show a lack of consistent strategies to approach multilingual classes. These results are discussed in the light of the need to train teachers of all disciplines in multilingualism and the demand for public policies to teach Spanish as an additional language in Chilean schools.