Linguistic diversity in German schools – Findings from ethnographic research in a secondary school
Dr. Simone Plöger de l'Universität Hamburg

Although migration and linguistic diversity are integral parts of the German migration society, German schools are still characterized by a monolingual habitus and do not do justice to their multilingual student body. In my talk, I will present findings from my PhD project, in which I investigated the question of how newly arrived migrant students are included and/or excluded through language education. In the first part, I will present and discuss the ethnographic research design I used. By giving very concrete examples from language classes, in the second part, I will show and discuss how multilingualism arises but is also limited by the teachers’ actions and dominant language ideologies. Based on the data, we will discuss two aspects: How can linguistic diversity (in schools) be researched? What are the challenges and opportunities of linguistic diversity and how can teachers address them?