A Multilingual Outlook: Can Awareness-Raising about Multilingualism Affect Therapists’ Practice? A Mixed-Method Evaluation

Therapists are often unprepared to deal with their clients’ use of other languages. This\udstudy focuses on therapists’ experiences of having undertaken awareness-raising\udtraining\udabout multilingualism. Did the training impact their practice? If so, in what\udareas? Adopting a mixed-method approach, quantitative data were initially collected\udvia an online questionnaire with 88 therapy trainees and qualified therapists who\udunderwent training in multilingualism, combined with interview data from 7\udvolunteers. Having identified the issues on which the training had had most and least\udimpact in survey responses, the interviews were guided by our emergent interest into\udthe impact of the training with potential relational complexities and unique, personal\udexperiences in mind. A narrative-thematic analysis uncovered interrelated themes:\udchanges, or impact of the training, with regard to Identity and Therapeutic Theory.\udTherapists referred to considerable transformative learning on both a personal and\udprofessional level, for instance in terms of how multilingual clients might bring\uddifferent and sometimes conflicting ways of organizing events and experiences into\udmeaningful wholes through their narratives during the session. Language switching\udseemed less significant in the survey, but emerged as a central theme in the interviews,\udespecially with regard to the possibility of addressing, challenging and sometimes\udcombining different emotional memories, cultural and existential concerns. Working\udacross these areas triggered some therapists to consider the need for expanding their\udtheory