Every citizen in the European Union should become multilingual, writes the EU-policy. (COM, 2008). So far, however, not all types of multilingualism in the every-day practice of teachers are acknowledged as an asset for learning. Especially the migrant languages are sometimes ignored and/or forbidden in schools (Pulinx, Van Avermaet & Agirdag, 2015). Families are even asked to communicate less in their mother tongue, which can have negative consequences for language development and cognitive development (Bialystok, 2001).
According to language development expert Jim Cummins (2001, p. 19):
“To reject a child’s language in the school is to reject the child.”
The question for primary school teachers is: how can we deal with all the different languages and support all pupils in their language development? International research shows that this requires not only a positive attitude towards the pupils' languages, but also that knowledge about multilingual language development and practical skills to apply this knowledge in a didactic manner is a prerequisite.
A total of 12 primary schools (8 in phase 1 and 4 in phase 2) participate in the 3M-project. These schools are divided into four different school types:
Various types of activities are developed for these schools. These activities fall under the three main modules explained above:
The activities fall under 5 categories:
The project knows a holistic multilingual education model (Duarte, 2017) in which the appreciation of the language to immersion has a place.