Multilingualism and Self-Development: Insights Into Teachers' Practices and Predictors

Self-development is vital for enhancing language teaching ability (LTA), a key component of instructional effectiveness. While prior research on LTA self-development has emphasised the roles of teacher cognition and emotion, less attention has been paid to teachers' linguistic repertoires. Yet, language teachers may draw on diverse linguistic resources that shape not only their teaching but also their self-development. Using a complexity theory framework, this study investigated the relationship between university language teachers' LTA self-development practices and their multilingualism, mindsets, anxiety, cultural orientations and perceptions of the societal and institutional status of the languages they teach, as measured by a questionnaire. Participants were teachers of English, French, German and Spanish. The findings revealed significant variation in LTA self-development practices: English teachers reported lower engagement in research-focused activities compared to their counterparts teaching French, German and Spanish. The findings also indicated that multilingualism, specifically, the contextual use of multiple languages, emerged as the strongest and most consistent predictor of LTA self-development, surpassing anxiety, mindsets and cultural orientations. This finding, coupled with the significantly lower research engagement reported by English teachers, highlights the centrality of active multilingual practice in LTA self-development and underscores the need for more targeted initiatives that leverage language teachers' linguistic resources and address subject-specific disparities.