Despite the extensive use of the concept language awareness since 1984 and several operationalizations within the field, systematic empirical research comparing learners’ development of language awareness through plurilingual education across educational levels, is, to the best of our knowledge, still lacking.
From 2020 to 2023, the Independent Research Fund Denmark finances a project that seeks to fill this gap and to contribute to the further theorization of the field of knowledge. Based on classroom observations and student interviews, the project investigates how learners develop language awareness in the context of plurilingual education in primary and lower secondary language education, and in a course in general language awareness (“Almen Sprogforståelse”) in upper secondary education. Furthermore, the project aims to develop pluralistic approaches to languages (Candelier et al., 2012) in the Danish context, focusing on the learners’ linguistic background as a resource (see, e.g., Auger, 2014; Cenoz, 2017).
The paper will present an operationalization of language awareness, developed in the project’s first phase, distinguishing between a practical, metalinguistic, and critical manifestation of language awareness (van Lier, 1998, 2004), directed towards nine linguistic levels (Gombert, 1992; Doughty & Williams, 1998; Moore, 2014), including a linguaculture level (Agar, 1995), and a transversal language learning level (Candelier et al., 2007; Haukås, 2018).
Drawing on this operationalisation, the project will discuss examples of how students’ language awareness manifests itself in primary and secondary education, when language teaching is based on plurilingual education. Focusing on the similarities and differences between the educational levels, the paper will further discuss the impact of age on the development of language awareness.
Methodologically, the project is based on an abductive approach. Through a comparative multiple-case study design (Georg & Bennett, 2004; Yin, 2014), the data collected in the project’s second phase through classroom observations and group interviews, will be coded and analyzed by drawing on qualitative content analysis (Mayring, 2015) until relevant and transverse coding categories and ‘key incidents’ appear (Erickson, 1977; Kroon & Sturm, 2007; Kabel et al., 2019). This approach aims at discovering patterns in the development of students’ language awareness, drawing on an understanding of language awareness as a dynamic (Dufva & Alanen, 2005; Bialystok, Peets & Moreno 2014) and multilevel phenomenon (van Lier, 2004). The data will contribute to further develop the initial, theory-based operationalization, focusing on the question, how the development of language awareness can be described across the educational levels.