@inproceedings{01GVD2ZJ29NYAWQ0W9R7QH1HZT,
  abstract     = {{Since the past two decennia, there has been a significant international rise in migration (Eurostat, 2020). This increase, which stems from various reasons (e.g. labour migration, family reunification, and refugees), creates higher linguistic diversity in the receiving societies. Schools' populations reflect this diversity, with many pupils who do not speak the same language at home as the school's language of instruction (LoI) (Van Avermaet, 2009). For schools to cope with this multilingual challenge, many countries impose a monolingual policy to create an 'immersion' program for their students (Gogolin, 2002). Although this policy is adopted in many schools, the classroom practices may differ from this policy since many multilingual students revert to translanguaging strategies. This presentation aims to look at how linguistically diverse schools deal with this imposed monolingual policy when the classroom reality strays with the opposed policy.

Data is collected in three secondary schools in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking Region of Belgium). Eighteen teachers were observed for a total of 138 hours and interviewed (semi-structured) about their linguistic classroom practices. In addition, the three schools' principals and language coaches were interviewed regarding the execution and plans of the LP. Policy documents of all three schools and the official LP documents of the Educational Department of Flanders were analysed. Results show that the schools' management teams prefer a more multilingual policy as they disagree that a monolingual approach leads to more equal educational opportunities for multilingual students. However, this vision is not supported by the Educational Department, so LP innovation is being pressed back. Secondly, we notice that teachers struggle to find their way in a jumble of recommendations based on both the Government and the school's written and oral LP. This declared language policy does not always align with the teachers' perceived language policy (Bonacina-Pugh, 2012).}},
  author       = {{Van Raemdonck, Maxime and Vantieghem, Wendelien and Van Avermaet, Piet}},
  booktitle    = {{AAAL 2023 Conference, Abstracts}},
  keywords     = {{Language policy,multilingualism,secondary education,steunpunt diversiteit & leren}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  location     = {{Portland, Oregon}},
  publisher    = {{American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL)}},
  title        = {{School actors navigating between implementor & arbiter : the dynamics in multilingual schools' language policy}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}