Rethinking second language teacher education for multilingual and migration-receiving classrooms: teachers’ and teacher educators’ perspectives in Türkiye

English language teaching (ELT) classrooms in Türkiye are becoming increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse as immigrant-background students enter K-12 schools. While prior research has largely focused on Turkish-medium instruction, limited attention has been given to how English teachers navigate multilingual classroom realities or how teacher education prepares them for such contexts. This qualitative study explored the experiences of eight English teachers and two ELT professors through deductive-inductive structuring qualitative content analysis, framed by translanguaging, funds of knowledge, culturally responsive pedagogy, and trauma-informed education. Findings indicate that pre-service preparation, shaped by monolingual and monocultural assumptions, left teachers underprepared for multilingual classrooms serving students affected by displacement. Participants reported improvising classroom strategies, including translanguaging, peer buddy systems, and visual scaffolding, often alongside emotional strain and limited institutional support. Professors similarly emphasised gaps in teacher preparation and the need to integrate linguistic diversity, socio-emotional awareness, and interdisciplinary perspectives into ELT programmes. The findings highlight the implications of multilingual classroom diversification for English teacher education in migration-receiving contexts.