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    Enquête exploratoire

Resources for assessing the home language competences of migrant pupils

This page will be available in English soon. Please refer to the pages in French.

Survey on the assessment of home language competences

In 2021 and 2022, the RECOLANG team carried out a European survey on the place of home languages at school, particularly in the educational pathways of migrant teenagers between the ages of 11 and 18. The survey looked at the assessment of home language competences and their role in different education systems in Europe and beyond. The survey consisted of two complementary sections aimed at two different target audiences:

A section for learners aged 11 to 18 with a history of migration and one or more home languages other than the language(s) of schooling. This section was available in 9 languages: Arabic, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Persian (Dari/Farsi), Portuguese and Turkish.

A section aimed at schools and educational establishments, teaching and support teams in schools, and those involved in initial and in-service training for teachers working with this age group (11-18 year olds). This section was available in 6 languages: English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian and Portuguese.

Objectives

The aims of the survey were to gain a better understanding of:

  • whether and, if so, how the languages and cultures of learners are taken into account in schools, and for what educational purposes;
  • how language competences and their uses can be properly acknowledged as relevant to the learning pathways of young people or in the professional development of teachers.

Video

Would you like to find out more about possible ways of integrating home languages into assessment? Watch this documentary clip on plurilingualism and assessment. 

Survey procedure

Given that very little research has been carried out internationally to understand how home languages are assessed in different contexts (Gross et al., 2020), we adopted an exploratory approach (Swedberg, 2020) aimed at generating a provisional initial analysis by collecting information from different contexts and describing the main findings. The online survey was carried out throughout 2021 and 2022 and collected data from 164 institutions and 191 learners in 47 countries.

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What learners said about their home language(s) at school

In the survey, learners were encouraged to share their views on what schools are doing - or not doing - about their home languages, and what they expect schools to do to develop their languages. The following quotes illustrate what learners said.

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Conclusions from the two questionnaires

There is little assessment of the home language competences of plurilingual learners taking place at schools.

Ad hoc home language assessment is extremely common.

 The extent to which schools are involved in assessing learners' home language competences depends largely on the personal interests of stakeholders (teachers, coordinators, etc.).

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Consequences to be drawn from the survey results

1
Schools need more knowledge about and training in the importance of assessing learners' home language competences. With a few exceptions, this was highlighted in the institutional surveys and learners' responses, which confirmed the lack of awareness, materials and knowledge about assessing home language competences.

2
A set of evidence-based principles for assessing home language competences across Europe should be developed and shared by institutions. This could lead to a reduction in 'ad hoc' assessment that focuses primarily on assessing competences related to the language(s) of schooling.

3
Countries should collaborate on collecting and sharing different types of tools and materials for assessing various home language competences for different age groups.

4
The gap between what happens in schools, where a majority of learners say that their languages are not catered for, and the desire of these same learners to continue learning their languages should be explicitly taken into account.

Some additional results from the surveys

Institutional survey (PDF)

Learner survey (PDF)

Bibliography

Gross B., Hansen A., McMonagle S., Duarte J., García-Jimenez E., Szelei N. & Pinho A. S., "Expert evaluation on urgent research on heritage language education: A comparative study in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain", Journal of Home Language Research, 4(1), pp. 1-16, 2021, https://doi.org/10.16993/jhlr.35, accessed on 23 June 2023.

Swedberg R., "Exploratory research", in Elman C., Gerring J. & Mahoney J. (eds.), The production of knowledge - Enhancing progress in social science, Cambridge University Press, pp. 17-41, 2020.