CULTURE, LANGUAGE, AND MULTILINGUAL EDUCATION: FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHERS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS MULTILINGUAL POLICY IN INDONESIA
Cultura, lengua y educación multilingüe: actitudes de los profesores de lengua extranjera hacia la política multilingüe en Indonesia

FAILASOFAH, AMIRUL MUKMININ, MASBIROROTNI MASBIROROTNI, MUKHLASH ABRAR, NUNUNG FAJARYANI, FORTUNASARI FORTUNASARI, MARZUL HIDAYAT AND AKHMAD HABIBI
Universitas Jambi (Indonesia)

DOI: 10.13042/Bordon.2022.90900
Fecha de recepción: 31/08/2021 • Fecha de aceptación: 12/07/2022
Autor de contacto / Corresponding author: Amirul Mukminin. E-mail: amirul.mukminin@unja.ac.id

Cómo citar este artículo: Failasofah, F., Mukminin A., Masbirorotni, M., Abrar, M., Fajaryani, N., Fortunasari, F. et al. (2022). Culture, language, and multilingual education: foreign language teachers’ attitudes towards multilingual policy in Indonesia. Bordón, Revista de Pedagogía, 74(3), 121-137. https://doi.org/10.13042/Bordon.2022.90900

INTRODUCTION. In a multilingual classroom, teachers play an essential role in encouraging and fostering a multilingual attitude and behavior at the school, as their actions can considerably influence their students. This study is intended to explore the teachers’ attitudes towards multilingual policy and multilingual pedagogy. Therefore, theories on language educational policy and multilingual pedagogy and practices are discussed as guidance. METHODS. The study used a survey research design, and the questionnaires were sent online to gather the data. The participants were 100 foreign language teachers who teach at high schools in an Indonesian province. They were asked to voluntarily respond to three main themes: Multilingual education knowledge, language education policy in Indonesia, and multilingual classroom practices in the questionnaire in the questionnaire. T-test and MANOVA were employed to investigate the difference between variables. RESULTS. The descriptive and inferential analyses revealed that the attitudes towards multilingual pedagogy implemented in Indonesia were almost uniform across different foreign language teachers having a positive attitude. Out of 18 statements, the high mean scores are related to the belief that learning another language could foster openness to other people’s language and culture and learning different languages can build students’ ability to use languages within a context. DISCUSSION. Taking for granted that participants have different ages, teaching experience, gender, and foreign language, there is no significant difference in their attitude towards multilingual education and practices. Most of the participants of this study believe that multilingual education contributes to some benefit for their students. Yet, the results also show that participants also view that the government has neither provided nor accommodated proper support for multilingual education.

Palabras clave: Multilingualism, Multilingual pedagogy, Teacher’s attitudes, Foreign language teaching.

Introduction

There is an unquestionable fact that multilingualism occurs around the world as an effect of human activities such as business, migrations, travels, marriages, and even digital communication. People use two or more languages as their way of life, separately or together, for different purposes in different domains of life in a society. Regardless of their competency level of each language, people use the languages for their communication. Hence, nowadays we have students with rich linguistic background and walkway in schools. There is a diversity of home languages and cultures. Meanwhile, schools have also been offering programs that aim at developing multilingual competences in several languages. UNESCO (2011UNESCO (2011). Enhancing learning of children from diverse language backgrounds: mother tongue-based bilingual or multilingual education in the early years. UNESCO.) mentions that this fact represents a challenge for current schooling contexts since the educational system should conform to the students’ needs and provide a proper education to be balanced with their social and cultural demands. Therefore, the professional preparation of language teachers which generally emerges in monolingual view should change to be a “multilingual turn” (Lucas et al., 2014Lucas, T., De Oliveire, L. C. and Villegas, A. M. (2014). Preparing linguistically responsive teachers in multilingual contexts. Englishes in Multilingual Contexts, Multilingual Education, 10, 219. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-017-8869-4_13). Teachers should be able to adjust their teaching approach from a one-language or monolingual perspective to a multilingualism that represents their students’ many languages in contact.

The world of education is in constant change. On one hand, educational policies intend to introduce changes into the practices of teacher communities operating in the practicum of schools (Fábián, 2004Fábián, G. (2004). Teachers’ ownership in the process of change in the culture of pedagogy. In: Magnus Persson (ed.), Towards the teacher as a learner: contexts for the new role of the teacher, 83-91.). On the other hand, current research emphasises the importance of teachers’ ownership in fostering innovation processes. In a classroom, Borg (2006Borg, S. (2006). Teacher cognition and language education: research and practice. Continuum.) argues that teacher attitude to educational policy and teaching approach is a robust predictor which will undoubtedly affect their performance. Moreover, researchers in the field argue that insight into teachers’ attitudes and beliefs are necessary to understand and improve language teaching and students’ learning (Haukas, 2016Haukas, A. (2016). Teachers’ belief about multilingualism and a multilingual pedagogical approach. International Journal of Multilingualism, 13(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2015.1041960). Attitudes are the mental dispositions people have towards others and the current circumstances before making decisions that result in behaviour (Baker, 2006Baker, C. (2006). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (4^th ed.). Multilingual Matters.). Haukas (2016Haukas, A. (2016). Teachers’ belief about multilingualism and a multilingual pedagogical approach. International Journal of Multilingualism, 13(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2015.1041960 ) adds that in the multilingual classroom, on that account, teachers play an essential role in fostering multilingual behaviour in the classroom, and their actions can exert significant influence on their students. Otherwise, multilingual students will miss the opportunity to use their second or third language outside the home and slowly shift into the dominant language (Montrul, 2013Montrul, S. A. (2013). Bilingualism and the heritage language speaker. The handbook of bilingualism and multilingualism (2^nd ed.), 168-189. Wiley-Blackwell. ).

Accordingly, Indonesia as a country of people from different ethnics, race, religions, culture, and language, multilingualism is one phenomenon that could not be ignored by Indonesian people (Hamied, 2012Hamied, F. A. (2012). English in multicultural and multilingual Indonesian education. In A. Kirkpatrick and R. Sussex (eds.), English as an international language in Asia: implications for language education. Springer, pp. 63-78.). Schools should be responsible for accommodating students’ learning needs for such language education challenges and problems. The Indonesian government has been developing curriculums based on the students’ need analysis and evaluation over time until now (Alwasilah, 2013Alwasilah, C. (2013). Policy on Foreign Language Education in Indonesia. International Journal of Education, 7(1), 1-19.). The current curriculum, Kurikulum 2013, was developed by the Ministry of Education and Culture of Indonesia to promote the idea of multilingualism or linguistic diversity by preserving and maintaining the diverse vernacular languages in Indonesia besides the enforcement of Bahasa Indonesia as the national language (Renandya, 2004Renandya, W. A. (2004). Indonesia. In H. Wahkam and Ruth Y. L. Wong (eds.). Language policies and education: the impact in East Asian countries in the next decade. Times Academic Press.). English could also be used as a medium of instruction for the foreign language class or any other subject in bilingual classes. It regulates the language of instructions as the means of communication in teaching and learning process, which consequently become a special issue to be considered by teachers in their multilingual classrooms (Perpres, 2019OECD (2009). Teaching practices, teachers’ beliefs, and attitudes in creating effective teaching and learning environment: 1^st result from TALIS. OECD publishing https://doi.org/10.1787/978926406 8780_6_en Perpres RI (2019). https://peraturan.go.id/common/dokumen/ln/2019/ps63-2019.pdf). However, there has been little attention paid to the cultivations of the local language that most of the teachers concern more on their teaching content than the language itself (Idris, 2014Idris, S. (2014). Language policy and the construction of national and ethnic identities in Indonesia. US-China Education Review B, 4(10), 691-705.). Therefore, it is essential to explore teachers’ attitudes towards multilingual education in Indonesian curriculum, the government effort to support the implementation of the curriculum, and the appropriate multilingual classroom practices for foreign language learning at schools. This research were aimed to answer two questions: 1) what attitudes do FL teachers’ have toward Indonesian multilingual pedagogy? and 2) is there any difference in teachers’ attitude towards Indonesian multilingual pedagogy based on their social demographic characteristics (gender, age, teaching experience, and language of teaching)?

Literature review

Multilingualism in education

Regardless of the ability to communicate in more than one language, bilingualism and multilingualism have been debatable proven to be different in some aspects. Studies on third language acquisition have highlighted the differences between the second (SLA) and third language acquisition (TLA), and the advantages of multilingualism in the acquisition of additional languages (Jessner and Cenoz, 2019Jessner, U. and Cenoz, J. (2019). Teaching English as a third language. In X. Gao (ed.), Second handbook of English language teaching (pp. 155e172). Springer.). Bilingualism is defined by Jessner (2014Jessner, U. (2014). On multilingual awareness or why multilingual learner is a specific language learner. In M. Pawlak and L. Aronin (eds.), Essential topics in applied linguistics and multilingualism, second language learning and teaching (pp. 175-184). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01414-2_10) as the use of two languages in a person’s mind, while multilingualism means the use of three or more languages by an individual. Multilingualism is moreover associated with third language learning and acquisition, which encompasses the development of cognitive flexibility (Cenoz, 2009Cenoz, J. (2009). Towards multilingual education . Basque Educational Research from an International Perspective. Multilingual Matters.). She claims that multilingual learners, having enhanced linguistic knowledge and experience in different languages, may obtain better qualities of languages than monolingual learners and users. In addition, multilingual learners have a strong focus on multi-competence that in the process of learning the third language they develop a meta-system based on their bilingual norm as a language user with emerging qualities, which differ from those of a monolingual or even bilingual. Cenoz (2013) believes that these advantages are mostly connected to the broader linguistic repertoire as multilingual speakers. Moreover, Cenoz (2009Cenoz, J. (2009). Towards multilingual education . Basque Educational Research from an International Perspective. Multilingual Matters.) proves that multilingual learners’ cognitive flexibility would also be linked to the metalinguistic awareness and learning strategies they have developed in the process of acquiring previous languages.

Findings in TLA research show a higher-level ability of multilingual learners to shift strategies and restructure their internal representations of the linguistic system (Chenoz, 2013, De Bot et al., 2007De Bot, K., Lowie, W. and Vespoor, M. (2007). A dynamic system theory approach to second language acquisition. Bilingualism, Language, and Cognition, 10(1), 7-21. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728906002732). They also concluded from their TLA studies that a student’s prior linguistic experience influences the strategies which they adapt effectively and utilise in their foreign language classroom. Jessner (2008Jessner, U. (2008). Teaching third languages: findings, trends and challenges. University of Innsbruck, Austria. Retrieved from Ulrike.Jessner@uibk.ac.athttps://www.unil.ch/files/live/sites/magicc/files/shared/Ressources/Jessner_2008_Teaching_third_languages.pdf) claims that multilinguals are capable of making use of introspective methodology as an adequate means to elicit metalinguistic thinking processes during target language performance. For example, they can perform better in a translation task by acknowledging and recalling the form of word associations. That way of thinking reveals the highly complex, dynamic, and non-linear process of multilingual development, although that is not easy to be predicted.

Researchers who emphasise the effects of bilingualism or multilingualism on the learning process believe that bi/multilingualism facilitates the acquisition of additional languages and improves one’s cognitive functioning (Cenoz, 2009Cenoz, J. (2009). Towards multilingual education . Basque Educational Research from an International Perspective. Multilingual Matters.; De Angelis, 2007De Angelis, G. (2007). Third or additional language acquisition. Multilingual Matters.; García-Mayo, 2012García-Mayo, M. P. and Rothman, J. (2012). L3 morphosyntax in the generative tradition: from the initial state and beyond. In J. Cabrelli Amaro, S. Flynn and J. Rothman (eds.), Third language acquisition in adulthood. John Benjamins (in press).). Multilingual speakers have the potential to benefit from their repertoire, but their metalinguistic awareness and strategy development may not be similar since they will also be influenced by some factors such as learning support by parents or teachers. However, it has also been reported that multilingual students may miss some opportunities to make the most of their language’s repertoire at times. For example, Nagy et al. (1993Nagy, W. E., García, G. E., Durgunoglu, A. Y. and Hancin-Bhatt, B. (1993). Spanish-English bilingual students’ use of cognates in English reading. Journal of Reading Behavior, 25(3), 241-259.) prove that multilingual students failed to associate words in English and Spanish, even if they were cognates. Traditional teaching may be one of the reasons for failure. In a diverse language background classroom, teachers used to teach the languages in isolation, multilingual speakers could not have adequate opportunity to make use of the advantages of their multilingualism.

Cenoz and Gorter (2017Cenoz, J. and Gorter, D. (2017). Language education policy and multilingual assessment. Language and Education Journal, 31(3), 231-248.) proposed the need to focus on multilingualism in teaching and research. They highlighted the importance of looking at students as multilingual speakers who are different from monolingual speakers and have rich linguistic trajectories. They also consider the need to look at the whole linguistic repertoire and to establish synergies between the different languages. The third dimension of focus on multilingualism is the social context. This context includes the specific context of the school and the broader context in the community. Focus on multilingualism regards multilingual trajectories as dynamic and highlights the resources which the multilingual learner has at his/her disposal.

Pedagogical translanguaging is closely linked to this multilingual approach to teaching because it uses the multilingual speaker’s resources to enhance language and content learning. In pedagogical translanguaging, the multilingual repertoire, the set of language varieties, should be activated to support language acquisition and metalinguistic reflection (Garcia and Wei, 2014Garcia, O. and Wei, L. (2014). Language, languaging and bilingualism. Translanguaging: language, bilingualism, and education. pp. 5-18. Retrieved on September 2020 from https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137385765). Pedagogical translanguaging is understood as planned by the teacher inside the classroom so that multilingual learners benefit from their whole linguistic repertoire (Cenoz and Gorter, 2017Cenoz, J. and Gorter, D. (2017). Language education policy and multilingual assessment. Language and Education Journal, 31(3), 231-248.).

In Indonesian context, discussing language teaching is addressing the issue of language education in a multilingual setting, where more than 700 local languages exist (Campbell and Grondona, 2008Campbell, L. and Grondona, V. (2008). Ethnologue: languages of the world (review) . Journal of the Linguistic Society of America, 84(3), 636-641. https://doi.org/ 10.1353/lan.0.0054). Language users, apart from their mother tongues, have to learn and use the national language Bahasa Indonesia as a second language (L2) by the time they start their school. They also have to learn English as their foreign language (FL) as it is a compulsory course at grade three and other additional FL at grade ten such as Arabic, German, Japanese, Chinese, and French. In such a situation, we cannot expect Grade 9 students to have English proficiency similar to that of their counterparts such as students in Singapore and the Philippines, where English is a second language.

The implementation of the bilingual program in Indonesia is absolutely worthwhile in endeavouring to prepare secondary school students to be competent bilinguals to face global challenges performing high competencies in their fields (Margana, 2009Margana (2009). Developing model of bilingual education at vocational high schools in Yogyakarta. Research Report of Competitive Grant Funded by DIKTI.). Most of the Indonesian people are bilingual from birth. Indonesian people communicate in their mother languages at home. In the classroom context, mostly, teachers use Bahasa Indonesia as the national language and additionally English as a mandated foreign language. That condition should be beneficial as Romaine (1995Romaine, S. (1995). Bilingualism (2^nd ed.). Basil Blackwell Ltd.) suggests, in terms of meta-cognitive strands, students who use of two or more languages as a means of classroom communication practices would gain meta-cognitive awareness to deal with the use of the activated languages during communication practices both spoken and written communication.

At school, a language teacher presents essential aspects of the language under study but also approaches language as a mediating tool for communication. Language, then, is not exclusively an object of teaching but a means of communication and interaction. In a class with multilingual and multicultural students, the method and approach employed by teachers should be effective and applicable (Herdina and Jessner, 2000Herdina, P. and Jessner, U. (2000). Multilingual as an ecological system the case for language maintenance. ECOnstructing Language, Nature and Society: The Ecolinguistic Project Revisited. Essays in Honour of Alwin Fill. Stauffenburg Verlag.). Therefore, teaching languages requires sufficient teacher’s competence (personal, social, pedagogical, intercultural, emotional, and professional). It will affect and determine the result of the learning process and students’ performance, especially in multilingual and multicultural language learning (De Angelis, 2007De Angelis, G. (2007). Third or additional language acquisition. Multilingual Matters.).

Multilingualism within the educational context cannot depend solely on the foreign language or the number of languages that are taught at school. It depends on some components that are essential in promoting and facilitating the language learning. As teachers are likely to be the first point of contact for students when learning foreign language, assessing their attitudes may help the school’s administrators and foreign language policy makers or curriculum developers to understand their feelings and position in teaching foreign language classrooms. Teachers’ attitudes play an essential role in fostering multilingual behaviour in the language classroom, and their actions can exert significant influence on their students (Lasagabaster and Huguet, 2007Lasagabaster, D. and Huguet, A. (2007). The linguistic issue in some European bilingual contexts: some final considerations. Multilingualism in European Bilingual Contexts: Language Use and Attitudes. Multilingual Matters LTD.).

Previous related studies

Some studies have investigated teachers’ attitudes and behaviour regarding multilingual context and pedagogy. A study about teachers’ belief on the role of prior language knowledge in language learning was conducted by De Angelis (2011De Angelis, G. (2011). Techers’ belief about the role of prior language knowledge in learning and how these influence teaching practices. International Journal of Multilingualism, 8(3), 216-234.). The study also explored 176 school teachers’ perception of the usefulness of language knowledge in modern society and their teaching practices to be used with multilingual students. The participating teachers were from Italy, Austria and Great Britain who teach different subjects like Languages, Science, Literature, or Physical Education shared similar views to most of the questionnaire statements. For example, they agree that knowing a language helps students learn another one and that students who are familiar with several languages could achieve better results across all disciplines. Even though, some teachers do not believe that knowing a language may be useful when learning other languages. De Angelis (2011De Angelis, G. (2011). Techers’ belief about the role of prior language knowledge in learning and how these influence teaching practices. International Journal of Multilingualism, 8(3), 216-234.) found that a large number of teachers across the three countries show little awareness of how languages interact in mind and seem to think that language interactions give rise to confusion and delays when learning the second language.

Regarding multilingual pedagogy, Danping Wang (2016Wang, D. (2016). Translanguaging in Chinese foreign language classrooms: students and teachers’ attitudes and practices. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2016.1231773) explores what students and teachers think and do about translanguaging practices in beginner classes in Chinese universities. The survey of 201 students describes that 50% of them were inclined to a multilingual form of instruction that they could make use of their linguistic resources for meaning negotiation. On the other hand, teachers show their contradictory attitudes towards classroom language choices. Some of them experienced difficulties to fit in with multilingual pedagogy; others have implemented and developed a translanguaging pedagogy. Wang (2016Wang, D. (2016). Translanguaging in Chinese foreign language classrooms: students and teachers’ attitudes and practices. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2016.1231773) discovered that language teachers should be more aware of three substantial aspects of translanguaging: re-new their knowledge on language learning, especially on language acquisition, facilitate structured translanguaging strategies and develop a transformative teachers-students role.

Methods

The researchers explore the attitudes of foreign language teachers at secondary schools towards multilingual education curriculum by employing descriptive quantitative research design using a survey method. In this study, the researchers decided to use a cross-sectional survey rather than a longitudinal survey because this study collected the data at a single point in time (Creswell, 2016Creswell, J. (2016). 30 essential skills for the qualitative researcher. SAGE.). The questionnaires were distributed online through Google Form to 100 high school foreign language teachers who teach at secondary schools in one of Indonesian provinces and approved to become the participant of the study. The first part of the survey is a socio-demographic characteristic questionnaire that requested the participants’ information of their age, gender, language of teaching language, and teaching experience (see Table 1). Some previous studies suggest that the belief and practices of female and male teachers may systematically differ so that the researchers control for the mentioned socio-demographic background (OECD, 2009OECD (2009). Teaching practices, teachers’ beliefs, and attitudes in creating effective teaching and learning environment: 1^st result from TALIS. OECD publishing https://doi.org/10.1787/978926406 8780_6_en Perpres RI (2019). https://peraturan.go.id/common/dokumen/ln/2019/ps63-2019.pdf). The second part was 18 statements developed by the researchers because they were closely related and appropriate to this study.

In the present research, a close-ended questionnaire design with statements was formulated for gathering the data as the second part of the survey. The questionnaire was developed based on some experts’ theories in multilingual education. There are three main themes: multilingual education knowledge, language education policy in Indonesia, and multilingual classroom practices (see Table 2). As a Likert scale seems to be useful for measuring the attitude, opinion, and perception, understanding of participants about a phenomenon, the second part of the questionnaire was developed to 18 items with a 5-point Likert scale (5 = strongly agree, 4 = agree, 3 = neither agree nor disagree, 2 = disagree, and 1 = strongly disagree). A pilot study was conducted in order to provide evidence for the reliability of the research instruments. Based on the result of the analysis of Cronbach alpha, it was found that the value of α was .732. So, it can be concluded that this questionnaire is reliable.

For its validity, the researchers piloted the instrument by using “think – aloud interview” (Neuman, 2014Neuman, W. L. (2014). Social research methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches (7^th ed.). Pearson Education Limited.) with the participants who were not part of this study. The researcher asked other 11 foreign language teachers to take part. Through the technique, the foreign language teachers were asked to articulate their thoughts about the questionnaire, while the researchers took note of their thoughts (Johnson and Christensen, 2008Johnson, D. C. (2009). Ethnography of language policy. Language Policy, 8(2), 139-159.). Through this technique, the researchers were able to measure if non-sample participants obtain the same understanding of the questionnaire with the researchers.

For data analysis, after the data were collected, the researchers computerised the data and saved them into Microsoft Excel. The researchers then calculated the data and measured their frequency, percentage, mean, and standard deviation to investigate the teachers’ attitude. The mean score of participants attitudes was calculated to indicate their overall attitudes interpretation: from 1.00 until 2.00 represents low, from 2.01 until 3.00 represents moderately low, from 3.01 until 4.00 represents moderately high, from 4.01 until 5.00 represents high (Nunnally, 1997Nunnally, J. C. (1997). The study of change evaluation research: principle concerning measurement experimental design and analysis. In E. L. Dlm. Struening and M. Gut-tentag (eds.), Handbook of evaluation research. Sage. ). We also used t-test and MANOVA to evaluate the differences among independent variables.

The researchers covered the identities of people, places, and research site using made-up names to keep the rights of human participants. By signing the research consent form, the participants also confirmed that their contribution was totally volunteering, and their demographic information would be privately treated.

Results

As shown in Table 1, the study has four independent variables, each of which has at least two levels: gender (female or male), age (30-39 years old or 40-49 years old), length of teaching experience (0-5 years, 6-11 years, 12-17 years, 18-23 years, or 24-29 years), and the foreign language taught (English, Mandarin, Arabic, German, Japanese, or France). The data from the distributed questionnaire have been gathered from 100 participants. Most of the participants are female (87%), most are between 30 to 39 years of age, most of them have been a teacher for around 0-5 years (33%), and most are English teachers (50%). As it is seen at Figure 1, the description of overall mean scores of all statements of the three categories reveal the majority level of inter of teachers’ attitudes towards multilingual education and practices. Out of 18 statements, it is indicated that the participants’ attitudes towards 11 statements regarding multilingual education are high (mean scores are more than 4.00). Six statements are moderately high (mean scores are between 3.01 and 4.00), and one statement is moderately low (mean score is 2.69). The highest mean score is shown by participants’ attitude towards the third statement “learning another language could cultivate openness to other people’s language and culture” (mean = 4.54). The lowest mean score is shown by participants’ attitude towards the second statement “besides their mother tongue and Bahasa Indonesia, multilingual students have to be native-like proficient in their foreign language” (mean = 2.69).

Figure 1. Mean scores of the participants’ attitudes towards multilingual education [View full size] [Descargar tamaño completo]

The result of t-test analysis was obtained based on two participants’ socio-demographic background: gender and age. 53 participants were between 30 to 39 years old (M = 3.9225, SD = .47572) and 47 participants who are between 40 to 49 years old (M = 4.0355, SD = .35723). Table 3 shows that there is no difference between teachers’ attitudes of the two groups of age towards multilingual education (F = 1.267 and sig. 2 tailed = .187).

T-test output (see Table 4) from 87 female teachers (M = 3.9868, SD = .44381) and 13 male teachers (M = 3.9008, SD = .27900). T-test also shows that there is no significant difference the two groups of gender towards multilingual education (F = 1.460 and sig. 2 tailed = .500). It means that almost all participants have positive attitude towards multilingual education.

Findings of the MANOVA test are shown in the table below. To compare independent variables across dependent variables, the Wilks’ Lambda test was chosen for the analysis to get the more robust result (Pallant, 2007). From the Table 5, in general, it is evident that there is no significant difference among six different foreign languages taught by the participants towards multilingual education (F = .562 and sig. = .728 > .05), towards language education policy in Indonesia (F = .932 and sig. = .464 > .05), and towards multilingual classroom practice (F = .825 and sig. = .535 > .05). In investigating the difference among variables, a comparison between groups on each dependent variable is shown in Table 5.

Another MANOVA test was conducted to investigate the difference between different lengths of the participants’ teaching experience (independent variables) across multilingual education categories (dependent variables). The BOX M test (F = 2.162 and sig. = 003 > .001) that participant’s groups are homogeneous. Table 6 demonstrates that there is no significant difference among five groups of participants based on their teaching experience, towards multilingual education (F = .508 and sig. = .730 > .05), towards language education policy in Indonesia (F = 1.516 and sig. = .204 > .05), and towards multilingual classroom practice (F = .992 and sig. = .416 > .05). Participants showed that they share a positive attitude towards multilingual education, language education policy in Indonesia, and multilingual classroom practices.

Discussion

The present study is intended to explore the foreign language secondary school teachers’ attitude towards multilingual pedagogy, language education policy, and multilingual classroom practices. Multilingual context refers to contexts where more than one language is used in or out-of-school settings. The findings describe that the majority of the foreign language teachers participating in this study have a positive attitude towards multilingual pedagogy. Out of 18 statements, it is indicated that the participants’ attitudes towards 11 statements regarding multilingual education are high (mean scores are more than 4.00), six statements are moderately high (mean scores are between 3.01 and 4.00) and one statement is moderately low (mean score is 2.69).

The highest mean score is shown related to participants’ attitude towards the third statement about multilingual education advantage “learning another language could cultivate openness to other people’s language and culture” (mean = 4.45). It is followed by the fifth statement, which also explore their attitude towards the benefit of multilingual education “learning other languages can build students ability to use languages in context” (mean = 4.4). This result could mean that most of the participants of this study believe that multilingual education contributes to some benefit for their students. Two of the benefits are that multilingual students are more aware of another culture and appear develop the ability to use languages in contexts.

Learning another language can assist students in learning about their own culture and lead to recognising other cultural conditioning (Liddicoat and Crozet, 1997Liddicoat, A. J. and Crozet, C. (eds.) (1997). Teaching culture as an integrated part of language teaching: an introduction. Teaching Language, Teaching Culture. Applied Linguistics Association of Australia. ). From their reading and writing in two or three different languages, they can enjoy literature in each language. Students are recommended to find the appropriate model of expression and grammatical construction to be successful in communication in other languages. Moreover, being multilingual, students will gain the ability to create a deeper understanding of different traditions and ways of thinking and behaving. As teachers’ attitudes during the learning process also affect students’ attitude formation, change and maintenance (Lasagabaster and Huguet, 2007Lasagabaster, D. and Huguet, A. (2007). The linguistic issue in some European bilingual contexts: some final considerations. Multilingualism in European Bilingual Contexts: Language Use and Attitudes. Multilingual Matters LTD.), their positive attitudes towards multilingual advantages would be a constructive component in their teaching foreign language process.

Many language acquisition researchers discuss the benefits of multilingualism over monolingualism, such as cognitive and social advantages, including skills in code-switching. Lambert and Tucker (1972Lambert, W. and Tucker, G. R. (1972). Bilingual education of children; the St. Lambert experiment. Newbury House Publishers.) describe some shreds of evidence from research in learning other languages suggest that multilingual children show greater cognitive flexibility and creativity in problem-solving. Bilingual children have two or more words for each object and idea, and different meanings are sometimes attached to words by the two languages. This behaviour means that a bilingual person may develop the ability to think more flexibly.

Regarding this, most of the participants agreed that multilingualism could help students looking at issues from a different perspective. They could quickly transfer the ideas into another language that they have understood, and they thought that it was helpful to have more choices in literature. Multilingual awareness, as the primary element of the knowledge of second or third language students (Jessner, 2008Jessner, U. (2008). Teaching third languages: findings, trends and challenges. University of Innsbruck, Austria. Retrieved from Ulrike.Jessner@uibk.ac.athttps://www.unil.ch/files/live/sites/magicc/files/shared/Ressources/Jessner_2008_Teaching_third_languages.pdf), is their asset to attempt to think critically. However, developing students’ thinking process is primarily facilitated by the teachers themselves (Fábián, 2015Fábián, G. (2015). Non critical thinking: what if not thinking? Procedia: Social and Behavioral Science, 186, 699-703.). Teachers should scaffold their students to be able to develop a skill, or an understanding of new concepts and most of the participants show that they have a positive attitude towards the statement regarding the scaffolding in a foreign language classroom is moderately high (mean = 3.63).

The lowest mean score could be seen at the participants’ attitude towards the second statement asking their response to foreign language learners target proficiency “besides their mother tongue and Bahasa Indonesia, multilingual students have to be native-like proficient in their foreign language” (mean = 2.69). This result shows that most of the participants do not agree with the statement, which means they think multilingual students do not have an obligation to achieve native-like proficiency when learning the language. They need the language for the various personal reasons in learning another language—their religious beliefs, their international careers, their holidays, or their online activities. They require the second language for an efficient L2 user, not for those of a native speaker (Dornyei, 1990Dornyei, Z. (1990). Conceptualising motivation in foreign-language learning. Language Learning, 40(1), 45-78.).

Labov’s studies prove that L2 learners are different from other groups in that all the others are native speakers (Cook, 1997Cook, V. (1997). Monolingual bias in second language acquisition research. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 34, 35-50.). Most language teachers and students presume that they aim to be as close as possible to a native speaker of the second language. Cook (1997Cook, V. (1997). Monolingual bias in second language acquisition research. Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses, 34, 35-50.) adds that in terms of the usual definition of the native speaker as a person speaking the language they acquired from birth, this is in principle unachievable by that definition. The objective of language learning is also different for multilinguals. They do not aim to master a language for all purposes and functions. They master the codes that are sufficient for the functions they want that language to perform. There is no need to develop proficiency in all the languages for the same purposes or the same language for all purposes (Canagarajah and Wurr, 2011Canagarajah, S. and Wurr, A. J. (2011). Multilingual communication and language acquisition: new research directions. The Reading Matrix, 11(1), 1-15.).

This study mainly reveals that the foreign language teacher participants share an almost uniform attitude that they admitted multilingual education has essential benefits for their students. Granted that participants are at variance with age, teaching experience, gender, and foreign language, there is no significant difference in their attitude towards multilingual education and practices. They also view that the government have not been provided and accommodated proper supports for multilingual classroom practices especially for secondary schools. Even though, the governmental institutions are responsible for initiating, supporting, supervising, and evaluating the multilingual education policy (Hamied, 2012Hamied, F. A. (2012). English in multicultural and multilingual Indonesian education. In A. Kirkpatrick and R. Sussex (eds.), English as an international language in Asia: implications for language education. Springer, pp. 63-78.).

Conclusion

In conclusion, since societies are continually drawing on and using multiple languages, no one can avoid the fact that multilingualism is a reality around the world today. In schools, students’ ethnography background (such as language knowledge, culture, social, and ethnicity) should be considered in developing a foreign language teaching method and approach in order to help them comprehend and learn the language in context. Teacher attitudes to educational policy and teaching are such a strong predictor which will certainly affect his or her performance in the classrooms. The findings of this study reveal the foreign language teachers are aware of the benefits of multilingualism and have positive attitude towards some multilingual practices. Foreign language teachers’ attitude towards the language curriculum and teaching practices required for the multilingual educational context is significantly essential for the curriculum implementation success. This study provides necessary information about multilingualism and multilingual pedagogy to the currently limited literature in Indonesia. Further researchers could improve on it to explore more in-depth information by expanding and adapting the instrument based on the future evolution of the multilingual education research area.

References

Resumen

Cultura, lengua y educación multilingüe: actitudes de los profesores de lengua extranjera hacia la política multilingüe en Indonesia

INTRODUCCIÓN. En un aula multilingüe, los profesores juegan un papel fundamental a la hora de fomentar la actitud y el comportamiento multilingüe en la escuela, ya que sus acciones pueden influir considerablemente en sus alumnos. Este estudio pretende explorar las actitudes de los profesores hacia la política multilingüe y la pedagogía multilingüe. Por lo tanto, las teorías sobre la política educativa lingüística y la pedagogía y las prácticas multilingües se discuten como orientación. MÉTODOS. El estudio utilizó un diseño de investigación de encuestas y los cuestionarios se enviaron en línea para recopilar los datos. Los participantes fueron 100 profesores de lenguas extranjeras que enseñan en escuelas secundarias de una provincia de Indonesia. Se les pidió que respondieran voluntariamente a tres temas principales en el cuestionario: conocimiento de la educación multilingüe, política de educación lingüística en Indonesia y prácticas en el aula multilingüe. Se emplearon la prueba t y MANOVA para investigar la diferencia entre las variables. RESULTADOS. Los análisis descriptivos e inferenciales revelaron que las actitudes hacia la pedagogía multilingüe implementada en Indonesia eran casi uniformes entre los diferentes profesores de lenguas extranjeras teniendo una actitud positiva. De 18 afirmaciones, las puntuaciones medias altas están relacionadas con la creencia de que aprender otro idioma podría fomentar la apertura hacia el idioma y la cultura de otras personas y aprender diferentes idiomas puede desarrollar la capacidad de los estudiantes para usar idiomas en un contexto. DISCUSIÓN. Dado que los participantes varían según la edad, la experiencia docente, el género y el idioma extranjero, no hay una diferencia significativa en su actitud hacia la educación y las prácticas multilingües. La mayoría de los participantes de este estudio cree que la educación multilingüe contribuye a algún beneficio para sus estudiantes. Sin embargo, los resultados también muestran que los participantes también ven que el gobierno no ha proporcionado ni adaptado los apoyos adecuados para la educación multilingüe.

Palabras clave: Multilingüismo, Pedagogía multilingüe, Actitudes de los docentes, Enseñanza de lenguas extranjeras.

Résumé

Culture, language et éducation multilangue : les attitudes des enseignants en langue étrangère envers les politiques de multilinguisme en Indonesie

INTRODUCTION. Dans une salle de classe multilingue, les enseignants jouent un rôle essentiel en encourageant et en favorisant l’attitude et le comportement multilingues à l’école car leurs actions peuvent considérablement influencer leurs élèves. Cette étude vise à explorer les attitudes des enseignants envers la politique du multilinguisme et la pédagogie multilingue. Par conséquent, les théories sur la politique linguistique éducative et la pédagogie et les pratiques multilingues sont discutées à titre indicatif. MÉTHODES. L’étude a utilisé une conception de recherche par sondage et les questionnaires ont été envoyés en ligne pour recueillir les données. Les participants étaient 100 professeurs de langues étrangères qui enseignent dans des lycées d’une province indonésienne. Il leur a été demandé de répondre volontairement à trois thèmes principaux dans le questionnaire : leurs connaissances en matière d’éducation multilingue, en matière de politiques linguistiques en Indonésie et en matière de pratiques en salle de classe multilingue. Le test t et MANOVA ont été utilisés pour étudier la différence entre les variables. RÉSULTATS. Les analyses descriptives et inférentielles ont révélé que les attitudes envers la pédagogie multilingue mise en œuvre en Indonésie étaient presque uniformes parmi les différents enseignants de langues étrangères, ayant une attitude positive. Sur 18 affirmations, les scores moyens élevés sont liés à la conviction que l’apprentissage d’une autre langue pourrait cultiver l’ouverture à la langue et à la culture des autres et que l’apprentissage de différentes langues peut renforcer la capacité des élèves à utiliser les langues en contexte. DISCUSSION. Étant donné que les participants diffèrent en termes d’âge, d’expérience d’enseignement, de sexe et ils n’enseignent pas la même langue étrangère, or il n’y a pas de différence significative dans leur attitude à l’égard de l’éducation et des pratiques multilingues. La plupart des participants à cette étude pensent que l’éducation multilingue apporte certains avantages à leurs élèves. Pourtant, les résultats montrent également que les participants estiment que le gouvernement n’a pas fourni et adapté les soutiens appropriés pour une éducation multilingue.

Mots-clés: Multilinguisme, Pédagogie multilingue, Attitudes des enseignants, Enseignement des langues vivantes étrangères.

Author profiles

Failasofah Failasofah

Assistant professor and has a PhD from Multilingualism Doctoral School, the University of Pannonia, Hungary and Faculty member at Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Jambi, Jambi, Indonesia. Her main teaching areas: English education, TEFL, TESOL, language education and her research interests are applied linguistics, TEFL, and Multilingualism.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4083-7625

E-mail: failasofah@unja.ac.id

Amirul Mukminin (corresponding author)

Professor in Educational Policy, Universitas Jambi, Indonesia. He holds a PhD from Florida State University in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies and an MS in educational sciences from Groningen University, the Netherlands, BA in English Education from Jambi University. He received a Fulbright scholarship to pursue his PhD and was an Erasmus Mundus postdoctoral researcher at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He received a 2016-2017 Fulbright Senior Research at Claremont Graduate University, California. He is particularly interested in educational policy, international education policy, teacher policy reforms, the standardized exam policy reforms, English/Indonesian language policy reforms, and bilingual/multilingual education policy, which will influence educational outcomes for underachieving student populations and family.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6806-1315

Corresponding author: amirul.mukminin@unja.ac.id

Corresponding address: Jl. Lintas Sumatera Jl. Jambi - Muara Bulian No. Km. 15, Mendalo Darat, Kec. Jambi Luar Kota, Kabupaten Muaro Jambi, Jambi 36122.

Masbirorotni Masbirorotni

Assistant professor at Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Jambi, Jambi, Indonesia and has a PhD in educational management from Universitas Jambi, Jambi, Indonesia. Her main teaching areas: education, language teaching, multicultural education, educational management, and her research interests are education, educational management and multicultural education .

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5435-5315

E-mail: eka_rotni@unja.ac.id

Mukhlash Abrar

Assistant professor at Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Jambi, Jambi, Indonesia and has a PhD in education from Queen Belfast University. His main teaching areas: language teaching, multicultural education, and English education, and his research interests are language teaching, English education and education.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9764-9919

E-mail: aabismyname@gmail.com

Nunung Fajaryani

Assistant professor at Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Jambi, Jambi, Indonesia and has a PhD in English education from Universitas Jambi, Jambi, Indonesia. Her main teaching areas: language teaching, multicultural education, and English education, and her research interests are language teaching, English for young children and research on English education.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7306-8079

E-mail: nfajaryani81@gmail.com

Fortunasari Fortunasari

Associate professor at Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Jambi, Jambi, Indonesia and has a PhD in English education from Universitas Sebelas Maret, Indonesia. Her main teaching areas: language teaching, multicultural education and English education, and her research interests are language teaching, English education and education.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9405-2340

E-mail: fortuna@unja.ac.id

Marzul Hidayat

Assistant Professor at Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Jambi, Jambi, Indonesia. He obtained his doctoral degree in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Florida State University, the USA with a specialization on Sociocultural and International Educational Development Studies.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7484-2396

E-mail: mhiday2012@gmail.com

Akhmad Habibi

Assistant professor at Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Universitas Jambi, Jambi, Indonesia and attended his doctoral degree at Universiti Malaya. Focusing on educational technology, he has published his work in journals (e.g., Aslib Journal of Information and Management, Information Development, Education and Information Technologies, IEEE access, Sustainability, Religions, and Qualitative Report). He is also a reviewer for reputable journals such as Computer and Education, Mathematics, International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, Education and Information Technologies, Applied Computing and Mathematics, and Accountability in Research. He is the editor-in-chief of the Indonesian research journal in education (IRJE).

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7687-2858

E-mail: akhmad.habibi@unja.ac.id.