Irish primary school teachers’ views on heritage language maintenance in plurilingual pupils

This article reports on a study which investigated primary school teachers’ views on heritage language maintenance in plurilingual¹ pupils. The study was undertaken due to the increasing number of children attending Irish primary schools with a first language other than English or Irish, the two official languages of Ireland. A total of 36 teachers in five primary schools in Dublin, participated in the study, which employed nine focus groups for data collection. The data was analysed using thematic analysis through NVivo 12. The results indicate that teachers view maintenance of the heritage language as beneficial. They acknowledge positives of children speaking more than one language and maintaining their home language for identity construction, the impact on overall learning and development, and the transfer of skills. While the teachers see the benefits, their main focus in the classroom in terms of language teaching is on English and Irish, as set out in the curriculum. They see their role and that of the school as fostering, accepting and affirming the languages, not teaching them. They acknowledge some concerns that prevent them from incorporating heritage languages in the classroom such as lack of knowledge, the number of languages present and potential parental concerns.