"Exploring teachers’ multilingual beliefs and practices in Argentina: insights from Ungspråk-TEACH"

Teachers play a crucial role in facilitating the multilingual turn in language education. While numerous studies have examinedteachers’ multilingual beliefs and practices across multiplecontexts, research in Argentina remains limited, despite itsmultilingual landscape. This study explores teachers’ beliefsregarding multilingualism and multilingual pedagogy within theArgentine educational context, along with their self-reportedmultilingual practices. It focuses specifically on the teaching ofItalian, a language with deep historical and socio-cultural roots inthe country. Data were collected from 117 Italian languageteachers using the newly developed Ungspråk-TEACHquestionnaire. Descriptive statistical analysis revealed a gapbetween teachers’ ideological support for multilingualism and theiractual implementation of multilingual pedagogy. Inferentialstatistical analysis using independent-samples t-tests showedsignificant mean differences in teachers’ multilingual beliefs andpractices by prior training in language teaching, teachingexperience, and teachers’ identification of students as multilingual.The study concludes with pedagogical implications for languageteacher education.