Language Teachers Facing the Challenges of Pluralistic Approaches

One of the obstacles to the education of teachers in pluralistic approaches to languages and cultures (PA) is their perception of their role as teachers of one language, and therefore of their identity. In this chapter, it is claimed that their identity should evolve towards an understanding of their role as contributors to the learners’ overall plurilingual and intercultural competence. Having presented the PA, the chapter attempts to link this facet of teacher identity with the descriptors of the Framework of Reference for Teacher Competences in Pluralistic Approaches (FTC-PA), and with various aspects of teachers’ beliefs revealed by a review of current literature, mainly published in the European context. A review of learners’ beliefs in the existing literature provides an indication of how they may perceive the identity of teachers. It is shown that this image can change due to the use of PA to languages and cultures in the classroom. Finally, this chapter examines how institutions express their own understanding of teacher identity. This work highlights the various factors involved in the dynamic construction of a teacher’s identity as a multilingual educator, which may lead to a more contextualized understanding of the determinants of this process.