Exploring mediagrams as a visual tool to encourage teacher critical multilingual awareness through parent-school interaction in Norway

Abstract

Teachers hold a key position for processes of inclusion and exclusion in parent-teacher relationships. Through teachers’ critical analysis of their own contributions in these processes, inclusion can be enhanced. This article explores how a visual representation of a person’s linguistic and media repertoires, a mediagram, can foster such teacher critical awareness. More specifically, it investigates the research question: How can mediagrams contribute to teachers’ critical awareness related to existing language ideologies in parent-teacher interaction in multilingual settings? To answer this question, an innovative use of the mediagram, where pupils and parents created a shared mediagram, is presented and discussed. Qualitative in-depth interviews with three teachers and four parents who took part in the activity are analysed. Interviews with the teachers are explored in terms of different dimensions of language awareness before and after implementation of the mediagram activity, while interviews with parents complement the teachers’ perspectives with parents’ perspectives. The study shows that the mediagram has promising potential to enhance teacher critical multilingual awareness in an extended understanding of the concept which also includes digital resources in interaction. Yet, it also points to important discrepancies in the parents’ and teachers’ evaluations of the tool.