ABSTRACT
In the field of teacher education in Europe, there is currently a widespread debate about what must be improved, so that teachers of additional languages (henceforth ALs) develop the competencies needed to foster plurilingual education in school settings. Within this debate, educational institutions propose different models for plurilingual education.
However, embracing a plurilingual language teaching perspective is not an easy task for language teachers. For many, it certainly involves deeply reconceptualizing their current – mostly monolingual – classroom practices. Such practices, though, are driven by the teachers’ own beliefs and understandings. Without proper instruction in how to challenge their beliefs and understandings, many teachers find it difficult to appropriate the plurilingual approach now favoured by educational institutions.
This chapter outlines the benefits of adopting teachers’ agency-driven formative interventions to promote teachers’ professional development efficiently. Through this kind of intervention teachers’ own beliefs about language and the way they teach it are challenged by confronting them with a new perspective. This confrontation should help them see language learning and teaching through a new lens. This, in turn, enables them to reframe their current monolingual classroom practices and engage in plurilingual ones.
