Sociohistorical Context and the Power of Empathy

Entry No.1 in the Multilingual Stance Series

Prof. Ester de Jong (University of Colorado, Denver) and A/Prof. Marianne Turner (Monash University)

In today’s increasingly unquiet, unstable and interconnected world, it is more vital than ever to engage productively with difference. There has been a great deal of scholarship on harnessing the language resources that multilingual learners bring with them to school, and we know this to be beneficial for these students. However, we also know that the devil is in the detail when it comes to bringing these ideas into the classroom. This is especially true in mainstream classrooms where students bring with them a great range of communicative and literacy skills in different home languages, and many of their classmates may be monolingual (in English).

So, how can teachers engage productively with difference under these complex conditions, considering the curriculum obligations of everyday schooling? The answer that we will explore in this entry is the adoption of a multilingual stance in our contexts of the United States and Australia. We will begin by explaining policy discourses - or messaging - around language in a broad sense in both countries, and then move on to how the scene might be set for the adoption of a multilingual stance in everyday teaching and learning.

Policy discourses: language in education

In the context of the United States, Ester has written how two broad discourses have waxed and waned - and waxed and waned again - over the course of settler history in the US (de Jong, 2013). For example, at the beginning of this history, plurilingual discourses were common - children would often be learning in the language of their community: Swedish, German, Dutch etc. Once official policy caught up with this, assimilationist discourses linked to Americanization, or becoming monolingual in English, became prevalent. Then, in the 1970s plurilingual discourses began entering policy documents, and in subsequent decades, there was a surge of interest in multilingualism. This was dubbed the multilingual turn (May, 2013; Conteh & Meyer, 2013). The most recent discourse is again an assimilationist discourse: the current administration in the US issued an executive order to formalise English as the official language of the US, although a constitutional amendment would be required to make this the formal law of the land.

The settler population in Australia is younger but has followed much the same trajectory, from settlers having more agency over schooling their children, to formal education programs in which assimilationist discourse prevailed. Alongside colleagues, Marianne (Tran Dang et al., 2025) recently discussed different language-related discourses in Australia. An assimilationist discourse became especially clear during the post-war immigration program of the 1960s, but this gave way to an integrationist discourse where lip service was paid to the importance of multiculturalism and multilingualism at school, and mainly promoted in the community domain (i.e., not the school domain). A commercialisation discourse also took root when Australia began to ‘export’ education to international students and, finally, the multilingual turn has also had an influence on Australian education, mostly in specialist English-as-an-additional-language (EAL) and languages domains. Indigenous children and their families have also been at the mercy of these discourses; for example, Indigenous bilingual education initiatives have fallen prey to assimilationist messaging around standardised testing (the NAPLAN) in Australia.

It is clear that there are similarities between the American and Australian contexts although, happily for Australia, an explicit English-only messaging that is so denigrating of immigrants is not in force. Nevertheless, an interesting point about Government policy is that it can introduce ideas but cannot so easily take them away. Ideas might change in policy - a multilingual turn might supplant the idea of assimilation, for example - but the older ideas are still out there in the public domain: in people’s minds and practices. Shifts in thinking might also occur in one domain, such as specialist English language classrooms or bilingual education programmes, but not in mainstream settings. This is why it is important to understand the context of the way we think about language in the context of education, and why we need to address a multilingual stance in depth, as opposed to, say, simply telling teachers to embrace multilingualism in the classroom. Affirming the language resources that students bring with them to class is occurring across Australia and the US, but the assimilationist discourse (students will be able to fit in faster and do better if they transition to English-only) is still alive and well, and now being actively promoted at Federal level in the US.

Fostering empathy amongst teachers

As teacher educators, we have both reflected on how we prepare teachers to engage with the language knowledge and experiences of multilingual learners. Given that working in this way is generally not a current requirement of the education system in either country, we work on the assumption that fostering empathy for multilingual learners is a good place to start. Many pre-service and in-service teachers have not had the experience of sitting in a class and not understanding what is happening. We both seek to offer this experience during professional learning . For example, Ester gives a mini-lesson in Dutch and Marianne gives a mini-lesson in Spanish (see related post at the end of this entry). In these lessons, we initially immerse the teachers in the other language without any accommodations. We then discuss what was difficult and what (if anything) helped them to learn, in Marianne’s case, and how lessons can be made more comprehensible by using EAL pedagogy in Ester’s case. Ester pitches her mini-lesson at newcomers (flowers and colours and all communication in Dutch), and Marianne at a secondary content lesson (history - reading comprehension and all communication in Spanish). 

We find that this kind of immersive experience builds empathy, and also supports thinking around what is useful to ensure that multilingual learners can understand and participate effectively in class. This approach is not new, and has been found to be effective (e.g., Oliveira, 2011). It attributes importance to the idea of transformative learning (Addleman et al., 2014),or helping teachers change their frame of reference. The immersive experience can help deepen understanding around the importance of a multilingual stance, and can also be extended to a classroom where monolingual (in English) students can have the opportunity to more deeply understand their multilingual learner classmates. The opportunity is priceless because it helps us understand what it is that we do not know.

References and Further Reading

Addleman, R. A., Nava, R. C., Cevallos, T., Brazo, C.J., & Dixon, K. (2014). Preparing teacher candidates to serve students from diverse backgrounds: Triggering transformative learning through short-term cultural immersion. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 43, 189-200.

Conteh, J. & Meier, G. (2013). The multilingual turn in languages education: Opportunities and challenges. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.

de Jong, E.J. (2013). Policy discourses and U.S. language in education policies. Peabody Journal of Education, 88 (1), 98-111. 

De Oliveira, L.C. (2011). In their shoes. Teachers experience the needs of English language learners through a math simulation. Multicultural Education, Fall, 59-62.

May, S. (Ed.) (2013). The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education. London: Routledge.

Tran-Dang, K-L., Nguyen, M., Turner, M. & Dang, K. (2026). From EAL students to multilingual learners: Privileging existing language knowledge in Australian classrooms, in M. Turner & B. Green (Eds.) Multilingualism as opportunity: An integrated perspective on English and languages education in Australia (pp.112-126). Routledge.