Multilingualism in Danish pre-service teachers’ writing assignments: between theory and practice

The study is conducted in the context of Danish teacher education, and explores
pre-service teachers’ reported knowledge about multilingualism and multilingual pedagogy. Through analysis of successful pre-service teachers’ examination papers, we explore how well pre-service teachers demonstrate their knowledge about multilingualism. Using semantic gravity analysis, we also explore how they describe implementing this knowledge in the context of supporting multilingual students’ learning in mainstream classrooms. This analysis provides a useful tool for reflecting on pedagogic and assessment practices for teacher educators and other professional degree educators. Our analyses show that pre-service teachers value multilingualism but have difficulty demonstrating in writing how to implement multilingual pedagogies. Investigating the degree to which pre-service teachers can demonstrate their understandings of theoretical concepts has broader implications for both teacher educators and educators of other professions, in terms of how we assess tertiary students’ understandings of theory, and how they describe implementing theory in their future practice.