Unpacking preservice teachers’ beliefs about students’ home languages: what matters in initial teacher education?

This paper presents findings from a quantitative investigation of preservice teachers’ beliefs about using students’ home languages as resources in educational environments. The study looked into the relationships between preservice teachers’ professional learning opportunities and their home language beliefs, which had been mostly ignored in prior research. An anonymous survey was used to obtain data from five different teacher education institutions (n = 819) in Flanders (Belgium). Multilevel regression analysis revealed a significant relationship between attending multilingual education courses and holding positive beliefs about students’ home languages. There was no association between fieldwork and teachers’ home language beliefs. The paper concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications, limitations and recommendations for future research.