SAG S MULTI – Multilingual Empowerment
Fostering linguistic diversity at school and in society
In our migration society, young people are increasingly growing up in a multilingual social environment. Schools must take this into account and strengthen pupils in their multilingual development in order to maximise equal opportunities. They can only realise the potential of their multilingualism for their educational biography and their professional career if their multilingualism is recognised as a resource and supported throughout.
The multilingual speech contest “SAG'S MULTI” has been promoting multilingualism since 2009 and is hosted by the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF, a key partner in this project. “SAG’S MULTI” offers young people a stage on which they can demonstrate their skills in German and another language and express their opinions. “SAG'S MULTI” thus has a self-empowering effect, strengthens young people's self-concept and represents a positive experience of their multilingualism. The Sparkling Science project uses qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate the extent to which “SAG'S MULTI” has a self-empowering effect, strengthens young people's (linguistic) self-image and represents a positive experience of their multilingualism.
In line with the citizen science approach, pupils from two partner schools in Vienna act as researchers and focus on the following key questions in cooperation with the scientific team at the University of Vienna:
- What are the experiences of “SAG'S MULTI” participants in their educational and professional careers with regard to their multilingualism and the appreciation and promotion of their multilingual repertoire?
- What significance did participating in SAG'S MULTI have for their educational and professional careers?
- Which measures can be derived from the systematically analysed experiences to promote multilingualism at school?
Firstly, a survey will be conducted among all previous participants of SAG'S MULTI focussing on their experiences in school and professional life. Narrative interviews with selected participants focussing on their language biographies will then allow to go into more depth. Pupils, teachers, school developers and researchers collaborate in analysing the collected data in order to develop measures for promoting multilingualism at school. The project results are disseminated via a large network consisting of the ORF, the partner schools, the Centre for Teacher Education at the University of Vienna, the University College of Teacher Education in Vienna and the Austria-wide network for the promotion of multilingualism voxmi, as well as the BIMM as the centre for teacher education in the context of migration and multilingualism.
