The first indicator emphasizes the importance of physical and digital learning spaces that reflect and celebrate the linguistic and cultural diversity of students. Classrooms should be organized to acknowledge and represent the identities of all learners. Students should actively participate in designing and organizing these spaces by contributing their work, projects, or artifacts for display on bulletin boards, walls, or digital platforms. This approach not only makes space for learners' languages and cultures but also communicates their value within the school context. By doing so, teachers affirm the cultural and linguistic identities of their students and foster an inclusive learning environment.
\nThis indicator focuses on the development and use of teaching materials that support multilingual learners. Teachers should select and create resources tailored to learners' language proficiency and cognitive development, ensuring that materials enable the achievement of both content and language objectives. Incorporating diverse cultural and linguistic elements into teaching materials is essential to address learners' identities and promote an appreciation of multilingualism. By doing so, educators encourage the development of complex linguistic skills and facilitate deeper engagement with diverse perspectives.
\nThe third indicator encourages educators to organize learners into groups that promote meaningful interaction and discussion. Group configurations should allow students to practice language skills and engage in negotiation of meaning. Teachers are encouraged to ask open-ended questions that elicit detailed responses, enabling deeper exploration of lesson concepts. Different instructional groupings should align with task objectives, providing opportunities for scaffolded learning, preparation for real-life interactions, and the use of students' full linguistic repertoires. Finally, this indicator highlights the shift in the teacher's role from a knowledge provider to a facilitator who creates spaces for learners to collaborate and develop their skills autonomously.
\nThis indicator focuses on fostering positive attitudes toward the linguistic and cultural diversity students bring to the classroom. Teachers are encouraged to view all languages and cultures as valuable resources and to actively show interest in their students' home languages and cultural backgrounds. By allowing and validating the use of all languages in the classroom, educators create an inclusive space where learners can use their full linguistic repertoires. Sensitivity to linguistic and cultural differences, coupled with an awareness of students' unique experiences, helps teachers create a supportive environment where multilingual identities are respected. These practices contribute to normalizing multilingualism and multiculturalism within the classroom and beyond.
\nThis indicator highlights the importance of helping learners understand and regulate their own learning processes (metacognition) and develop an awareness of language as a system (metalinguistic awareness). Multilingual learners often display enhanced skills in these areas, and teachers can further nurture these abilities by incorporating strategies that encourage students to plan, monitor, and evaluate their learning. Activities that focus on language as a subject of reflection—such as comparing and contrasting languages or exploring how different languages work—help learners draw on their entire linguistic repertoire, supporting the development of additional language skills.
\nThe Multiliteracy indicator promotes literacy practices that encompass all the languages within a learner's repertoire. In many cases, literacy development in languages beyond the dominant school language is overlooked. This indicator emphasizes the importance of providing opportunities for students to develop and use literacy skills in multiple languages and across various modalities. Teachers can use materials and activities that require students to engage with their full linguistic repertoire, encouraging practices that span different languages and cultural contexts. Such an approach enhances learners' overall literacy skills and supports their multilingual development.
\nKrulatz, A., & Christison, M.A. (2023). Multilingual Approach to Diversity in Education: A methodology for linguistically and culturally diverse learners. Palgrave Macmillan.
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