Teaching and learning in the multilingual classroom

Higher education institutions have become super-diverse spaces (Bruen & Kelly, 2016) whose multilingual nature is apparent amongst teachers and students. However, upon navigating the complexities of teaching and learning in multilingual classrooms this can often pose challenges for both teachers and students. This raises the question of how multilingualism can be harnessed in university classrooms. Researchers have addressed this issue over recent decades focusing on the advantages and challenges of multilingualism in higher education, as well as its impact on the teaching and learning process (Cummins, 2007; Moore, 2015; Van der Walt, 2015).
In our presentation we will focus on the University of Luxembourg with English, French, and German as official teaching languages, and Luxembourgish serving as the national language. We start our presentation with a critical analysis of the diverse roles that the university languages play at this institution. We proceed by sharing data that stems from an ongoing research project on linguistic diversity in higher education, drawn from the following two sources: interviews with colleagues engaged in teaching in bachelor programs and an online survey completed by bachelor students. Our presentation is enriched with practical examples from our teaching experience and from a teacher training we have designed and offered in February 2024. Throughout the presentation, we will showcase practices that we apply to activate the multilingual repertoire of teachers and students to promote diversity and inclusion in higher education.