The local language(s) of a country, the additional foreign language(s) taught in the curriculum, and the different L1s of migrant pupils all together turn education into a linguistically diverse scenery. Linguistically Sensitive Teaching (LST) advocates for social justice for all pupils, by acknowledging the role of all languages in learning, identity growth, and well-being (Bergroth, et al., 2022). LST aims to include all languages of the society, the school, and the pupils, as they all can serve as a valuable resource for learning.

To fulfil this aim, teacher education is an important starting point to reflect on the need for linguistic inclusion of all students, to make future educational professionals linguistically more sensitive towards their pupils.

This paper focuses on the context of the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC), with a trilingual educational system where at least the minority language Basque, the majority language Spanish and the foreign language English are taught, and where also migrant students are enrolled who have their own languages at home, different from the ones taught in the curriculum. The aim of the study is to explore how teacher students perceive LST in the educational context of the BAC.

This paper presents qualitative data gathered among 70 master students of education in the BAC, by means of the reflection tools designed by the LISTIAC project (Bergroth et al., 2022). On the one hand, an individual reflection task consisted of five open questions and a SWOT analysis regarding LST. On the other hand, a group reflection task consisted of a dialogue mat where students in small groups completed five reflection tasks, and made a final drawing representing a linguistically sensitive teacher.