Teacher Agency in Multilingual Pedagogies

Pedagogical Spaces in the Primary School

Thomas Quehl

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781800416062
• eBook ISBN: 9781800416093
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Inclusive Education

Through an ethnographic study that took place in highly diverse primary school classrooms in London and the East of England, UK, this book engages with teachers' perspectives and children's descriptions of their plurilingual experiences, as it explores what constitutes, hinders and potentially facilitates teachers' agency in multilingual pedagogies. The concept of teacher agency offers a powerful lens for critical reflections on the – often monolingual – status quo and on possible transformations in schools, where teachers seek to create pedagogical spaces that acknowledge, engage and promote pupils' plurilingual repertoires. This book develops a nuanced framework for understanding and enhancing teacher agency in multilingual pedagogies. It also encourages teacher educators and policymakers to recognise multilingual pedagogies as an integral part of (primary) school pedagogy and to support the capacity of present and future teachers to build on their professional knowledge and experiences, when normalising multilingual pedagogies in mainstream schools.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Key to transcripts
• Introduction
• 1 Multilingual Pedagogies and Teacher Agency – Mapping Out the Frameworks
• 2 Researching Teacher Agency: The Study
• 3 Classrooms in Real Schools: Contexts for Teacher Agency
• 4 Schools: Contexts for Multilingualism?
• 5 Between the Monolingual Norm and Superdiverse Voices
• 6 Teachers’ Perspectives in Busy Multilingual Classrooms
• 7 Towards Possibilities of Multilingual Pedagogies
• 8 Teacher Agency in Multilingual Pedagogies: No Guarantees
• References