Soft power: teachers’ friendly implementation of a severe monolingual policy

Abstract

Dutch-medium schools in Brussels traditionally cater to a Dutch-speaking minority, but they have recently seen a massive influx of pupils with a limited competence in Dutch. In order to face the resulting pedagogical and ideological challenges, many of these schools have intensified their efforts to remain Dutch enclaves in a predominantly Francophone city. In this article we discuss one Dutch-medium secondary school that positions itself as fairly severe in this regard. We will demonstrate, however, that teachers were generally drawn to a more friendly interpretation of their language policy as they reconciled monolingual expectations with multilingual pupils. Thus, although teachers agreed that a severe linguistic stance was important, they formulated various reasons for not adopting this stance relentlessly. And while pupils in principle could earn a ticket for not speaking Dutch, teachers often merely prefigured the possibility of sanctions, ignored the use of other languages to address other pressing matters, and occasionally recruited pupils' other linguistic skills as a pedagogical devicewithout, however, reneging on their language political stance. We argue that these ambivalent strategies can be usefully explained as the outcome of negotiating dilemmatically related ideological concerns.

A quantitative analysis of the language policy processes in early childhood professionals’ advice on multilingual parenting

“…More specifically, teachers with an intrinsic motivation to become a teacher in the first place, as well as their educational experience played a salient role in their adoption of the LPs, particularly their dedication to support HLs maintenance (in this case Spanish). Jaspers and Rosiers (2019) conducted an ethnographic study in a Dutch-medium school with a strict Dutch-only LP in Brussels, the capital region of Brussels, with a francophone majority. Their findings reveal a discrepancy between the meso and micro levels, as teachers exhibited a liberal interpretation of the school's language policy.…”

Utrymmen för flerspråkighet: Funktionella aspekter av flerspråkiga låg- och mellanstadielärares språkliga praktiker

“…I syfte att teoretisera funktioner av flerspråkig användning är således begreppet mellanrum användbart. Genom att jag analyserar flerspråkig användning som ett mellanrum mellan styrdokument och klassrumspraktik, framkommer bådeoch-positioner (Jaspers & Rosiers 2019). Dessa positioner innebär t.ex.…”

“…Tina uppvisar således en begränsad legitimering av annan språkanvändning än svenska samtidigt som hon betonar vikten av att känna stolthet över "sitt språk". I linje med vad tidigare forskning indikerat (Snoder, Hedman & Dewilde 2021;Jaspers & Rosiers 2019) pekar även föreliggande studie på komplexitet och ambivalens avseende flerspråkig användning inom ramen för den ordinarie undervisningen.…”

“…avseende översättningar och förklaringar för att underlätta kunskapsinhämtande på svenska). Någon lärare uttryckte dessutom viss ambivalens inför användandet av andra språk än undervisningsspråket svenska (jfr Cekaite & Evaldsson 2008;Jaspers & Rosiers 2019), vilket uttrycktes genom egna uppsatta ramar för flerspråkig användning. En sådan ambivalens kan förstås i förhållande till läroplanens skrivningar för ordinarie undervisning, där riktlinjer saknas för hur flerspråkigt stöd kan implementeras.…”

Nederlanders and buitenlanders

“…It also points to the principal's awareness that there may be controversy around this issue. At the same time, he acknowledges that bluntly prohibiting the language would not be conducive to a positive relationship with the pupil, and suggests a somewhat 'softened' tone to convey the same message (Jaspers and Rosiers 2019).…”