Talking about linguistic heterogeneity in Germany: Professional vision and membership categorization in future teachers’ conversations about language classes

This study examines future teachers’ normative ideas about linguistic heterogeneity in the classroom as expressed in their conversations about students. It uses membership categorization analysis (MCA), ethnomethodological conversation analysis (EMCA), and Goodwin’s concept of “professional vision” to analyze videotaped conversations between small groups of student teachers about written, ethnographically inspired classroom observations. The focus is on the categorization practices they apply to school children when talking about these documented elementary school lessons. Results show that the student teachers use these practices as interactional resources with which to mark the children’s behaviour as deviating inappropriately from expected classroom conduct and to explain this behavior based on assumed language skills and cognitive capabilities. The professional visions they establish thus reproduce common ideologies about multilingualism along with normative understandings of a classroom’s social and institutional order. Results are related to broader societal debates on the role of teachers in perpetuating inequality in Germany’s highly segregated school system, and their implications for teacher education are also addressed.