The development and use of multilingual repertoires in bilingual classrooms: between policy and practice in the <i>Escola Andorrana</i>

Multiple education systems coexist in Andorra, including the national Escola Andorrana (EA, Andorran school) that adopts a multilingual approach to teaching, with both Catalan and French serving as equal languages of instruction throughout primary education. In this article, we interview educators and administrators in the EA in order to discover how they engage their agency in the pursuit of developing learner multilingual repertoires. We then use the findings of these interviews to undertake a critical analysis of Andorran language-in-education policy. In our interviews, we witness tensions between rigid medium-of-instruction policy (that urges teachers to use one language in the classroom) and top-down directives that encourage fostering more flexible multilingual repertoires and metalinguistic awareness among learners. Teachers ultimately need to engage their agency in order to navigate this friction successfully. We find that an important aim of repertoire building is the compartmentalisation of languages in a way that prepares the child for life in Andorra and, as such, reinforces existing social hierarchies. Repertoire building, rather than a critical act of resistance that breaks down barriers between languages, is instead used to reify hegemonic structures.