Do Multilingual Teachers Make the Difference? Evaluating the Potential Language Resource of Primary School Teachers and Their Cultural Beliefs

Abstract

This paper explores the language usage of multilingual teachers and how this relates to their cultural beliefs. A key question is whether multilingual primary school teachers’ experiences of language and cultural diversity relate to cultural beliefs different from those of their monolingual colleagues or from multilingual teachers who do not use their first language in the school context (with students or with parents). Conducting secondary analysis of open access data on primary school teachers from the German National Education Panel Study (NEPS), this question is investigated based on propensity score matching for three subsamples. The results show that only 30% of multilingual teachers regularly use their non-German first language with students; when dealing with parents, this proportion drops even further. Moreover, the potential resource of multilingualism does not appear to result in disparities in the cultural beliefs of primary school teachers. The only difference revealed by the analysis was on the subscale of assimilative cultural beliefs, where multilingual teachers tend to hold weaker pronounced beliefs. Overall, the analysis cannot empirically confirm the expected benefits for multilingual elementary teachers using their first language skills.

Keywords

• cultural beliefs
• multilingualism
• language usage
• migration background