Multilingual Classrooms : A study of four Filipino teachers' experiences

Abstract: The majority of the world's population is multilingual, and there is an increase of demands on teachers worldwide to meet pupils' diverse linguistic needs and abilities. This paper on multilingualism aims to explore four Filipino teachers' experiences of working in a multilingual context. The study is based on a sociocultural perspective on language and learning, and views the school as an institution within a larger context. Through thematic interviews, the linguistic environments in the four teachers' classrooms are described. The paper also aims to describe the status of the languages used within the context of the schools, and how the teachers express the correlations between language and identity. The results demonstrate a complex linguistic situation where the teachers have a pragmatic approach to the three languages in their everyday lives, and the use of code-switching is common. English has a high status in the society, which is also noticeable in the classroom, but the teachers work to support pupils' identity development by also allowing them to express themselves in their mother tongue.