University students’ language learner beliefs and identities in the context of multilingual pedagogies in higher education

Abstract

While working life is increasingly multilingual, multicultural and multidisciplinary, university students in many countries study fewer languages than before. This creates challenges for language pedagogies in university because they are expected to prepare students for operating in these superdiverse contexts. Language pedagogies are also affected by the multilingual turn in second language acquisition (SLA) that has led to conceptualising language learners as multilingual beings. Recent research suggests that multilingual awareness, or constructing a more multilingual identity, could be advantageous for individuals’ investment in learning foreign languages. In addition, students’ language learner beliefs have a significant role in how they negotiate their learner identities and subsequently succeed and invest in language learning. From these premises, this longitudinal study examines the learner beliefs and identity negotiation of Finnish social science students that took part in restructured multilingual communication and language studies for academic and professional purposes as a part of their bachelor’s degree. The students’ discourses were analysed to investigate (1) how the students position themselves in relation to societal, sociocultural and individual levels of SLA, (2) how the students negotiate their multilingual and professional identities and how these negotiations intersect, and (3) how the students’ language learner beliefs evolve during the three-year research period. The results suggest that university students refer to experience-based evidence, as well as acknowledge, accept or contest positions given or implied by society or an educational institution. The students also placed agency away from themselves to deny responsibility in language learning. The students’ identity negotiation was influenced by their learner beliefs. There were changes in students’ learner beliefs at the end of the research period. It seems that students need explicit teaching on multilingualism to start developing a multilingual identity. The dissertation concludes with pedagogical suggestions for multilingual teaching in higher education.

Keywords: multilingualism, beliefs, identity, language learning, university pedagogy