Teacher Decision-Making in Multilingual EFL Task Selection: Evidence from Scenario-Based Concurrent Think-Aloud Protocols

Abstract

Teachers in increasingly multilingual EFL classrooms must select tasks that align with language-learning evidence, learner diversity, and classroom feasibility. Yet we know comparatively little about the real-time criteria teachers use when choosing between task options that differ in multilingual pedagogical affordances. This exploratory qualitative study used concurrent think-aloud protocols to examine EFL teachers’ in-action reasoning during task selection. Ten secondary-school EFL teachers from southern Germany and Austria evaluated eight paired task scenarios, each presenting two options that differed in their potential to leverage learners’ multilingual repertoires, for example, through cross-linguistic comparison and support for form–meaning mapping. Transcripts were coded using an iterative scheme capturing methodological orientation, language-related considerations (learner repertoire, teacher language competence, and languages involved), perceived cognitive manageability, and feasibility concerns. Teachers’ selections were analysed as alignment with the option classified by the authors as higher in multilingual pedagogical affordances, rather than as objectively “correct” versus “incorrect” choices. Cross-case analyses indicate that decisions clustered around recurring constraints between perceived clarity and manageability, target-language-only norms, and openness to multilingual mediation. The findings contribute a process-orientated account of teacher decision-making in multilingual task selection and identify reasoning patterns that may constrain uptake of multilingual pedagogical opportunities in everyday EFL instruction. By applying concurrent think-alouds to scenario-based task selection, we identify three recurring influencing factors of decision-making (manageability filtering, target-language legitimacy norms, rule-first ‘teachability’ cues) that appeared to constrain multilingual task uptake in the present scenario-based protocols whose process-oriented account of teacher reasoning is the primary focus of the project, while the methodological and practical implications are secondary.