Plurilingualism across curriculum in adult basic education: a participatory teacher training-action in Italy

Plurilingual approaches are increasingly applied to sustain subject learning in primary, secondary and tertiary education. However, learners in formal basic adult education remain overlooked, even though those contexts are multilingual in terms of class composition and dynamics. The paper presents participatory action researchconducted in Italy that aimed to introduce plurilingual and intercultural approaches intoadult basic education curricula. It focused on leveraging learners’ full linguistic repertoires to enhance subject learning and language and metalinguistic awareness. Five plurilingual teaching tools in subject areas were developed and piloted across diverse classes, promoting cooperative learning, mediation, and critical engagement. We outline the history tool as an example to showhow it facilitated intercultural and plurilingual perspectives in the study of the post-Second World War period. Teachers and students reported positive impacts on engagement, understanding, and class dynamics. The advantages of systematically adopting plurilingual approaches across curriculum subjects were confirmed, though further studies and resources are needed tosustain plurilingual education in similar contexts.