From reflection to design: a plurilingual research team’s ecological approach to cross-linguistic mediation research in icelandic and german primary schools

This study examined how a plurilingual research team (N = 7) drew on reflections from two exploratory workshops in Iceland (Reykjavík) and Germany (Berlin) to shape the philosophical, theoretical, and methodological foundations of a longitudinal study on cross-linguistic mediation (CLM) in multilingual primary school settings. Drawing on twenty hours of recorded reflective discussions, the analysis traces how the researchers’ philosophical and theoretical positions evolved through encounters with classroom practices and subsequently impacted the design of their research study. Applying Farrell’s (2015, 2024) framework and its five dimensions of reflective practice, the analysis highlights a shift toward an ecological understanding of CLM, which emerged from complex interactions among learners, teachers, materials, school cultures, and policy contexts. This shift informed key methodological decisions in the final proposal of the research project, including the adoption of an ecological systems perspective, a pre-intervention mapping phase, the selection of contrasting instructional ecologies, and the design of a collaborative, teacher-oriented professional development model grounded in lived classroom ecologies. The study contributes to research on systematic reflexivity in multilingual education by demonstrating how researchers’ reflective practices can serve as a methodological tool, shaping their stances and directly informing decisions about classroom research design.