POLICIES FOR PLURILINGUAL EDUCATION AND FL TEACHING IN THREE EUROPEAN COUNTRIES: A COMPARATIVE ACCOUNT OF TEACHERS' VIEWS

The study was conducted to provide a comparative account of teachers’ beliefs on plurilingual learning in three diverse European educational contexts: the Greek, Cypriot and Bulgarian one. Its objectives were to: i) specify teachers’ perceptions of key issues on plurilingual Education Policy, ii) identify their attitudes to English as a lingua franca and to early foreign language learning, iii) record their suggestions about further developing plurilingual education. 150 state primary school teachers participated in the study; 50 from each educational context. Semi-structured interviews were used, comprising the following sections: a) conceptualization of multilingualism, b) status of European languages c) introduction of foreign languages in early stages of education, d) suggestions about the development of multilingual education. The findings indicated the teachers’ overall positive attitudes towards issues of plurilingual policies and revealed the teachers’ acknowledgement of the benefits from plurilingualism and early foreign language learning.