This qualitative study explores teachers’ explicit displays of appreciation regarding multilingualism as a behavioural aspect of teachers’ positive attitudes. How these attitudes manifest themselves in classroom interaction is an important aspect of how teachers’ attitudes towards multilingualism can influence pupils’ engagement and school performance. Conversation analysis was used to describe the position and function of displays of appreciation in whole class interaction in Dutch primary schools that participated in an Educational Design Research project to foster multilingual practices. By studying teachers’ and pupils’ practices, more insight was gained into the co-construction of these so-called appreciation interactions. Results show that teachers’ appreciation occurred in the core or evaluation of the interaction and functioned as positive assessments, some of which could be characterised as compliments. Teachers’ compliments always referred to a pupil’s demonstration of one or more words in another language than Dutch. Different practices were used to realise either first or second assessments, and these practices seemed to be related to the type of assessment. The study provides suggestions for further research as well as implications for teachers and teacher trainers.
Nap et al. (Fri,) studied this question.