Project MeBis
Multilingualism in Educational Settings: Practices and Attitudes of Teachers, Parents and Children towards Multilingualism
MeBis is a project examining the handling of and attitudes towards multilingualism in children, parents and teachers in primary education settings, particularly concerning the use of several languages, for learning at home and reading out to children, but also during lessons with a particular focus on grammar and language comparisons.
While many children grow up with several languages, schooling is usually limited to teaching in the German language. At the same time, the approval of multilingualism in educational processes can have advantages for the learning of all children and can promote the integration of multilingual parents. A positive attitude towards multilingualism is needed as well as effective practices of acting multilingually. At present, however, there is a lack of insights into the attitudes and practices of teachers, parents md primary students regarding multilingualism – i.e. exactly those groups that are particularly responsible for effective processes.
The MeBis project will process an online survey of querying teachers and parents of primary school students regarding practices and attitudes relating to multilingualism. Primary schoolers will be assessed in person in classroom settings. Following this quantitative survey, parents and teachers can volunteer to take part in an in-depth interview. Moreover, multilingual parents can opt to participate in reading out to their child from multilingual books. The interviews and reading observations will enable deeper insights into practices and perspectives of participants – supplementary to the online survey.
Link to the current study: www.soscisurvey.de/mebis