Research on language in refugee education tends to focus on either academic achievement, or on sociocultural experiences of language among refugee learners. In this paper, I bring these two perspectives together, examining competing narratives through over 100 interviews with refugee children, their adult caregivers, and education decision-makers living and working in Kampala, Uganda. I find that education decision-makers (including teachers, programme leaders and policymakers) describe refugee families' use of one, shared and protected 'home language', and describe English in contrast as the primary language of opportunity. Refugee families, on the other hand, describe a much more complex and contested linguistic repertoire that does not include one stable and protected 'home language', but rather a multilingualism developed through forced migration and family separation. Families also discuss the central but not exclusive value of English, and concerns about opportunities for connection and return to places and people of origin without pre-migration linguistic repertoires. Building on concepts of mobile speech and translanguaging, and drawing on literature related to family language policies, I propose a new concept, refracted family language ecologies, to more fully capture the linguistic practices and aspirations of refugee families.
In China's English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) context, many ethnic minority students are multilingual and bring distinct sociocultural resources to the classroom. Yet when Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) is implemented in EFL settings, Culture is often integrated less systematically into CLIL design than the other three components of Coyle's 4Cs framework (Content, Communication, Cognition, and Culture). To address this gap, this study positions Culture as the organising spine and examines how it coordinates the other three components, while documenting how multilingual students mobilize their linguistic and cultural repertoires. Forty-five ethnic minority students at a Han-majority university completed a twelve-week 'Ethnic Culture' unit, comprising multimodal presentations, peer discussions, reflective journals, and stimulated-recall interviews. The findings show that audience-oriented design and guided multimodality made insider cultural knowledge more legible. Students enacted three-layered cultural identities through translanguaging practices that involved heritage language rooting, Mandarin glossing, and English framing. By embedding Culture at every stage, this CLIL activity facilitated language development, intercultural competence, reflective engagement, and inclusive participation. Overall, the study proposes a culture-anchored 4Cs CLIL model and elaborates its pedagogical value, offering theoretical clarification and pedagogical guidance for multilingual EFL programmes.
This study examines the development of CLIL secondary school students' written definitions in biology, from grade 7 to grade 9, in two schools participating in the same bilingual project (British Council-MEC in Spain) but differing in socioeconomic status (SES) profiles. Students' L2 disciplinary literacy in biology was measured through their performance of definitions. The definitions by the same students were analysed across school years (grades 7 and 9) and in relation to school SES, drawing on the Cognitive Discourse Functions model (CDFs), as well as SFL and LCT frameworks. A total of 144 definitions were examined using UAM CorpusTool. The study also focuses on the students' responses to a questionnaire on their perceptions regarding writing in CLIL. Results show development in CDF coverage, fluency and lexical complexity across school years in both schools. In contrast, in the higher-SES school students produced more expansions across school levels. These students also demonstrate more favourable views of writing in English compared to those in the lower-SES school. Findings highlight the continuing impact of SES on students' L2 disciplinary literacy and perceptions within a shared bilingual programme. The study aligns with the scope of JMMD in relation to bilingual literacy and multilingual learner emotions.
This article examines multilingual and multimodal family literacy practices by analysing how underlying desires, expressed through specific motives, shape language and media use in everyday family life. The study draws on a qualitative case study of a Finnish-Swedish bilingual family during the COVID-19 lockdown and focuses on joint literacy events related to remote schooling, online gaming, and shared reading and viewing. The data consist of a week-long Mobile Instant Messaging Interview (MIMI) with all family members, complemented by a post-interview. Guided by Reiss's theory of 16 basic desires, the analysis identifies six salient motives - Independence, Order, Power, Social contact, Curiosity and Tranquillity - through which family members' desires were enacted and negotiated. The findings show how these motives dynamically shaped participation roles, language choices and the use of digital and non-digital media, sometimes converging and sometimes giving rise to tensions between parents and children. The study contributes to research on Family Language Policy and family literacies by integrating a psychological perspective on motivation, highlighting the affective and motivational dimensions underpinning multilingual and mediated family practices.
This article examines how EFL teachers in early childhood education in Spain conceptualise multilingualism and how these conceptualisations relate to their teaching strategies and forms of agency. The study is based on five focus groups conducted in different regions of Spain (monolingual and bilingual) and analyses the data using a constructivist grounded theory approach with MAXQDA software. The results show that teachers' attitudes towards multilingualism are primarily articulated in three ways: as an obstacle, as an invisible reality, and as a pedagogical and social resource. These attitudes are linked to teaching strategies and recurring forms of teachers' agency. Overall, the study argues that teachers' responses do not depend on the multilingualism of the context itself, but on the way in which linguistic diversity is recognised, legitimised and transformed into a pedagogical possibility. It highlights how contextual variation, even within the same education system, significantly shapes teachers' understanding of multilingualism, which in turn influences their choice of teaching strategies and their professional agency. The article concludes with key implications for the training of both future and current teachers.
This quantitative study examines the relationships among Big Five personality traits, the General Factor of Personality (GFP), behavioural cultural involvement (CI), cultural preference (CP), and life satisfaction among Pakistani immigrants in Belgium. As a culturally diverse country, where immigrants comprise over 17.6% of the population, Belgium provides an important context for exploring this understudied community. Data were collected via a structured survey from 212 adults. Multivariable regression and parallel mediation analyses (PROCESS) revealed that when evaluated simultaneously, only conscientiousness and openness positively correlate with CI. Importantly, CI served as an indirect pathway linking the higher-order GFP and specific personality traits to life satisfaction, whereas CP displayed no indirect relationship. Furthermore, while personality structures tracked closely with CI, CP was negatively associated with immigrants' length of residence in Belgium rather than their personality traits. This illustrates the distinct ways that stable personality traits versus temporal environmental exposure relate to separate behavioural and attitudinal acculturation dimensions. The research also emphasises the need for qualitative and longitudinal approaches to further unpack these relationships.
