DoDiMu Practices of « doing » (socio-cultural) difference and dealing with multilingualism in the classroom: perception, reflection and change through video-based learning in communities of practice

The term “heterogeneity” has been the subject of intense public and academic debate for several years. Due to its openness, it is able to bundle different challenges that schools and the school system are currently confronted with. However, this openness is also the weakness of the term, which can be characterized by vagueness and is often overloaded (Budde, 2012). There is a consensus that dealing with heterogeneity is a professionalization requirement or a current research topic in the context of professionalization that needs to be mastered or dealt with intensively (Gebauer, McElvany & Klukas, 2013; Hirschauer & Kullmann, 2010; Sturm, 2013).

In the public as well as in the academic debate, two categories of difference in particular are currently receiving special attention: socio-cultural and achievement heterogeneity (cf. also the described arenas of discourse in Budde, 2012). Basically, two observational perspectives on heterogeneity or difference (Emmerich & Hormel, 2013; Weisser, 2005) can be distinguished in research: An essentialist perspective that views heterogeneity along social categories of difference as something that is brought to school (externalized) and derives didactic challenge (opportunity/ burden) from it (Budde, 2017; Derrida, 1990; Sturm, 2018; Walgenbach, 2014). To be distinguished from this is a sociological perspective in which heterogeneity is (also) (re)produced in schools (e.g., Diehm, Kuhn, Machold & Mai, 2013; Emmerich & Hormel, 2013; Gaststädt & Rüger, 2021; Merl, 2019; Rabenstein, Reh, Steinwand & Breuer, 2014; Wagner-Willi & Sturm, 2016) and thus can be defined as relative, socioculturally embedded, socially constructed, and partial (Sturm, 2013). It is also in the context of this second perspective that the study of practices in teaching is situated.

Taking into account the diversity within a class and the plurilingual student requires that teachers are trained and equipped. If we consider its definition, plurilingualism, is about « effective practices between individuals and in two or more languages » (Nussbaum, Moore and Borras, 2013). Students arrive in school with their linguistic repertory, which can represent a barrier to learn the language of schooling. It therefore represents a socio-educational challenge for our educational systems. Training teachers in the didactics of plurilingualism is becoming a necessity in « a socio-professional and civic perspective » (Gajo, 2006). It is no longer a question of « ‘only’ promoting a diversification of the supply and demand for languages in school contexts. The problem is to manage a plurality that is indeed there and gives rise to tensions and possible conflicts within territories where reversals of relations of domination or new assertions of old minorities have taken place » (Coste, 2008).

Currently, research on practices (Reh & Rabenstein, 2013) for producing and dealing with heterogeneity in school and classroom contexts is mainly conducted through ethnographies (e.g., Budde, 2014) or videographies (e.g., Sturm & Wagner-Willi, 2015). One advantage of video analyses is to be able to reconstruct, in a sociological sense of knowledge, action-guiding knowledge (Mannheim, 1964; referred to as incorporated knowledge in Bourdieu (1976)) that determines teachers’ everyday action practices. Videography, consisting of conversation analysis and image analysis, provides a methodological approach to this action-guiding knowledge. Verbal utterances as well as nonverbal elements can be recorded and evaluated in this way (for content-analytical evaluation of image/video data see Tuma, Schnettler & Knoblauch, 2013).