ABSTRACT
Although there is much research on the school environment and the teacher in general, there is only little empirical evidence concerning the influence of language teachers and the scholastic environment on children’s language achievement. In this chapter, a series of aspects connected with the school environment, such as the teachers’ ability to motivate, the teachers’ teaching style, the quality of teamwork—and hence also the involvement of all subject teachers in the promotion of linguistic and cultural diversity—and the way schools are organized in linguistic and cultural diverse contexts are discussed. Regarding school organization, for example, divided school systems for the official languages represent institutional barriers that lead to a scholastic monolingual habitus. Moreover, this chapter also deals with teaching methodologies and teaching tools, such as translanguaging and Content and Language Integrated Learning, and their impact on the development of linguistic as well as intercultural competences.
