Moving towards (new) multilingual paradigms

Abstract Multilingual education is increasingly perceived as a desirable goal in a world where global networks play a significant role. Crucially, educating multilingually requires the creation of multilingual learning spaces and the adoption of different standards by which to educate and assess multiple language learners. This presupposes an informed understanding of multilingualism as dynamic and complex. In line with a large body of scholarship, we argue that the multilingual mind cannot simply be seen as a mind that holds several (distinct) languages but rather as a complex system from which new properties emerge. In this paper, we focus on meta- and crosslinguistic awareness as part of such new properties in multiple language learners. We discuss the challenges of capturing and measuring these properties, propose methodological approaches to measuring multilingual competences and we call for the integration of holistic multilingual learning arrangements to foster these competences within the education system. To underpin our line of argument, we present findings from two recent studies which explore different dimensions of multilingual competence in pupils in German-language primary and lower-secondary schools in the historically burdened setting of South Tyrol. The studies focus on meta- and crosslinguistic awareness, transfer skills, students’ ability to work with the whole spectrum of their curricular languages (German, Italian, and English) as well as with entirely novel languages (including for example French, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, etc.). Our findings show that experienced multilingual learners develop special skills which allow them to flexibly move and operate across languages, and function in multilingual and monolingual mode.