Stakeholders' Perceptions About Language Teachers in a Multilingual School System

Nativeness And Multilignualism

Globalization has established multilingualism as the norm in many territories worldwide, and now many societies and individuals live in settings where two or more languages co-exist (Piller, 2016). With multilingualism have come both opportunities and challenges for education systems, and it is therefore crucial for language teaching to adjust to the ongoing reality, where previous monolingual ideologies clash against present multilingual approaches (Duarte et al., 2020). In response to this new situation, education systems across the globe have adapted their approach and have opted for focusing on internationalization and working on the coexistence of English, the main international language, and other languages with more local-specific relevance (Ampuja, 2015). One of the areas that has received linguists’ attention is the nativeness paradigm, a non-elective binary classification of speakers that assigns the “native” or “non-native” labels based on individuals’ order of language acquisition or place of birth. Although scholars have reflected on it for decades, this separation of language users keeps having an impact on society and especially on English speakers, being particularly detrimental for the social and professional identities of those perceived as “NNSTs” (Kiczkowiak and Lowe, 2021; O’Rourke and Ramallo, 2011).