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August 17, 2021
Abstract
In 2013 and 2015, the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs (KMK) passed resolutions based on theoretical and empirical research that called for the integration of multilingualism in textbooks for all subjects. The aim of these resolutions is to recognise and make use of all the resources, i. e. all the experience and skills, that students bring to the classroom to promote their development and to portray the great diversity of their environments. In the project SAMMELN, 33 textbooks for 17 subjects were quantitatively analysed, resulting in N=2,301 occurrences. The results show that, although multilingual elements regularly appear in textbooks across all subjects, these consist mainly of single words or phrases and are rarely included into tasks. Furthermore, the prevalence of languages that are frequently taught in German schools and of languages that are no longer spoken, is remarkable. In contrast, heritage languages that are commonly found in Germany, are rarely represented. These results suggest that multilingual elements present in textbooks are of predominantly decorative nature with little potential for multilingual pedagogy and without any connection to the language environment of the students.