Conference Agenda

The continuous rise in both the number and the diversity of newcomer students in Canada, The Netherlands and Germany along with the imperative of recognizing minority languages in post-colonial educational contexts like Canada and New Caledonia^[1], are frequently presented as considerable challenges for educators and school stakeholders. This symposium aims to spotlight the potential inherent in these new student populations to renew classroom dynamics proposing a reevaluation of pedagogical approaches. In these demographically diverse classrooms, teachers navigate a wide range of student profiles, encompassing linguistic, cultural and experiential knowledge while adhering to the school curriculum. In Canada, the Ontario Ministry of Education (2008) emphasizes that all teachers should be capable of supporting language learners. In New Caledonia, the Noumea Accord (1998) acknowledges the importance of indigenous Kanak culture and identity and sustains their re-introduction within the educational system as part of the decolonization process. In all contexts however, most teachers are trained to handle monolingual student populations, leaving them unprepared for the significant linguistic diversity in classrooms and often in denial of its didactic value (Razafimandimbimanana, 2022).

This symposium addresses the critical need for teachers to acquire updated skills for the effective practice of linguistically and culturally responsive pedagogy. By presenting perspectives derived from research conducted in diverse contexts, the session aims to address the global similarity of challenges in supporting teachers in the implementation of inclusive pedagogy. The symposium will delve into innovative solutions, drawing from cutting-edge research across the globe, underlining the didactic value of languages as resources for learning and advocating for the recognition of minority languages rights in education (Ruiz, 1984). The objectives of the symposium include:

- Enhancing our understanding of how to provide support to pre-service and in-service teachers in addressing discrimination faced by students with a migration, minority or indigenous background;

- Providing insights into strategies for ensuring the sustainable implementation of inclusive and equitable teaching practice;

- Discussing the implications for the international applicability and transferability of the proposed strategies.

The papers in this symposium showcase pioneering research grounded in both language as a right and as a resource for learning. All authors share the project of building culturally sensitive educational institutions by empowering silenced cultures and minorities. The first paper discusses the Language Friendly School approach that promotes linguistic inclusion and creates inclusive environments. The analyses based on interviews with educators from Canada and The Netherlands highlight factors contributing to the network's success in impacting engagement and belongingness. The second paper addresses challenges in implementing multilingual pedagogies in Germany, proposing that involving student teachers with civil society organizations can enhance their understanding and integration of multilingualism. The third paper advocates for the use of pluriartistic mediation to decenter linguistic expertise in (post)colonial contexts, emphasizing the principle of epistemic justice and the promotion of cultural sensitivity among future teachers. The fourth paper focuses on challenges faced by educators in Western Canada regarding newcomer students' disempowerment. It presents a project that provides tools for exploring and shaping the intersectional identities in terms of language, culture and literacy development.

Structure of the session. After a brief introduction, we will transition into paper presentations. Then, in discussion with the audience, we will explore, across the diverse contexts (Canada, The Netherlands, Germany, New Caledonia) how the variety of experiences shared enhances our understanding and practice of implementing sustainable pedagogies that are linguistically and culturally responsive. What strategies really promote change through inclusive pedagogy and social activism? Are they applicable to both pre-service and in-service teacher professional development?

^[1] A French-governed archipelago located in the South Pacific.

The first paper will center on the Language Friendly School approach, introduced by Le Pichon and Kambel in 2019 to advance linguistic inclusion and equitable educational access. Currently, more than 50 schools worldwide hold official certification as Language Friendly Schools (Le Pichon & Kambel, 2022). Grounded in a comprehensive school-wide strategy, each school commits to refraining from penalizing students for using their own languages and leveraging the linguistic and cultural expertise of their student body. Notably, the network's inclusivity spans diverse educational institutions on four continents, including indigenous, public and private schools, international schools, and schools in refugee centers. Despite contextual differences, these schools share a collective goal: fostering inclusive and culturally responsive environments. This presentation will explore the factors perceived by teachers as contributors to the success of the Language Friendly School network. Amidst challenging work conditions for educators, how do these schools implement a holistic strategy that integrates research-based practices to champion linguistic and cultural inclusion? What impact do teachers believe the network has on their respective schools? Using an inductive grounded theory method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), we analyzed the interviews conducted with school stakeholders (teachers and principals) from two schools in Ontario (primary and secondary schools) and four in The Netherlands, both at the start and after 6 to 12 months of participation in the network. In this presentation, we will show how the collaborative action approach empowered teachers and cultivated an environment conducive to diversity, ultimately benefiting students and their families. The presentation will showcase the impact of the network on student participation, engagement, and the sense of belonging for students, their families, and teachers according to teachers and administrators. We will highlight the results by showing artifacts shared by educators. The discussion will address the factors that empower educators and create an environment conducive to diversity, along with a consideration of the approach's limitations.

Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. (1967). The discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press. Le Pichon, E. & Kambel, E.R. (2022). The Language Friendly School: An Inclusive and Equitable Pedagogy, Childhood Education, 98:1, 42-49, DOI: 10.1080/00094056.2022.2020538

Research into the implementation of multilingual pedagogies shows that even when teachers have positive attitudes towards the linguistic diversity of societies and their students, they still often choose not to implement them in the classroom (De Angelis, 2011; Haukås, 2016; Huxel, 2018). The reasons can be related to a lack of professional preparation, a lack of resources (time, materials, etc.) and skepticism about learning outcomes (Melo-Pfeifer, 2020). This presentation assumes that greater involvement of student teachers with association of civil society working with multilingual populations, through service learning (Aramburuzabala, McIlrath & Opazo, 2019), can lead to a more concrete experience of multilingualism outside the classroom and the university, becoming part of their professional “funds of knowledge”. These professional experiences have the potential to bridge the gap between the lives of the students they will encounter in the classroom and their initial training, thus reducing student teachers’ skepticism towards multilingual pedagogies and overcoming the monolingual habitus they have been through during their education path. Engaging in community service projects that require multilingual communication and the full use of linguistic repertoires, might lead student teachers to see the immediate impact of their language skills, fostering a sense of social responsibility, through the emotionally loaded living of multilingual strategies in their daily lives. This presentation draws on this educational framework, using service learning to promote linguistic activism and the subsequent integration of multilingual pedagogies across diverse academic disciplines (Duarte, Gerritsen, Lourenço, Melo-Pfeifer & Pinto, forthcoming). The proposed approach, developed in the scope of the project BOLD (Building on Linguistic and Cultural Diversity), seeks to empower student teachers of different school subjects as linguistic activists by engaging them in meaningful community service projects that require the application and celebration of individual and societal multilingualism. By intertwining service learning, language education across the curriculum and initial teacher education programs, BOLD aims to foster a deeper understanding of linguistic diversity, linguistic responsive practices at school and beyond school, and social responsibility. In the scope of BOLD, we developed resources about linguistic and cultural diversity to ensure social justice. We will present these resources along with responses of student teachers to them, gained through thinking-aloud protocols. We will show how crisscrossing service learning, linguistic activism, and multilingual pedagogies in initial teacher education programs offers a holistic strategy to prepare student teachers from different school subjects for active participation and implementation of multilingual pedagogies across the curriculum.

Aramburuzabala, P., McIlrath, L., & Opazo, H. (Eds.). (2019). Embedding Service Learning in European Higher Education. Developing a Culture of Civic Engagement. Routledge. De Angelis, G. (2011). Teachers’ beliefs about the role of prior language knowledge in learning and how these influence teaching practices. International Journal of Multilingualism, 8(3), 216–234. Duarte, J.; Gerritsen, N.; Lourenço, M.; Melo-Pfeifer, S., & Pinto, S. (forthcoming). Service learning for linguistic and cultural diversity in Higher Education: proposals for initial (language) teacher education. Education Sciences (Featured paper) Haukås, Å. (2016). Teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism and a multilingual pedagogical approach. International Journal of Multilingualism, 13(1), 1-18. DOI: 10.1080/14790718.2015.1041960 Huxel, K. (2018). LehrerInsein in der Migrationsgesellschaft. Professionalisierung in einem widersprüchlichen Feld. ZIZU, 7, 109-121. Melo-Pfeifer, S. (2020). “Plurale Ansätze werden mich in der zukünftigen Unterrichtsvorbereitung beeinflussen.” - Unsicherheiten und Dilemmas künftiger Spanischlehrkräfte in Bezug auf plurale Ansätze. In S. Morkötter, K. Schmidt & A. Schröder-Sura (Eds.), Sprachenübergreifendes Lernen. Lebesweltliche und schulische Mehrsprachigkeit (pp. 97-117). Narr Verlag.

As a “nomad researcher”, I will draw from multiple migration experiences (Madagascar, Kenya, Canada, France, England, New Caledonia, Martinique) as well as a plurilingual standpoint to promote creatively inclusive teacher education. Inclusive pedagogy generally means student-centered approaches. If it equally refers to the principle of epistemic justice (Medina, 2011; Mohanty, 1989; Fricker, 2007), then educators, professors, scientists, trainers – in a word “experts”– have to concede to sharing their expertise status with students, trainees and members of larger society. In this paper, decentering linguistic expertise will be discussed as an ethical education posture especially when it comes to teaching in (post)colonial contexts or with communities that are minorized based on linguistic features. It is also a highly efficient way of preparing future teachers to integrate the didactic value of their classrooms’ cultural, linguistic and experiential diversity. Finally, on a long-term basis, the proactive inclusion of students’ expertise in pre-service teacher education contributes to (re)building every students’ self-esteem. However little it may be, such impact always repercusses to empowering minorized children, families, communities and decision-makers for we are dealing with the preparation of culturally-sensitive professionals in the field of education. As a concrete illustration of decentered language expertise and epistemic justice, I will present a creatively inclusive project carried out in a pre-service teacher program at the University of New Caledonia (2018-2020). In collaboration with local artists, the aim was to foster a better understanding of “linguistic micro-aggressions” (Razafimandimbimanana & Wacalie, 2020) both within student body and larger society. One of the innovative dimensions here was the use of pluriartistic mediation (photography, narrative biographies, street-art) at university level. Decentering linguistic expertise also calls for us researchers to rethink how we produce, share and embody scientific knowledge.

Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Clarendon Press. Medina, J. (2011). The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Oxford University Press Mohanty, C. (1989). « On Race and Voice: Challenges for Liberal Education in the 1990s”. Cultural Critique, no. 14: 179-208. Razafimandimbimanana, E., Wacalie, F. (2020). « Une forme insidieuse de mépris : les micro-agressions linguistiques en Nouvelle-Calédonie », Lidil, 61. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/lidil/7477

This presentation will focus on addressing educators who have been acutely and globally impacted by demographic shifts in their classrooms. Both pre-and in-service educators have been witness to increased sentiments of disempowerment and marginalization of newcomer students and have felt the widening chasm between curricula and practices. In this session I describe how a grassroots initiative conducted through a series of studies with educators in Western Canada examined the potential that culturally and ethnically diverse newcomer adolescent students bring to the classroom. The studies included workshops, multimodal and multilingual initiatives, with a heavy emphasis on an arts-based framework and walking methodologies. It led to the opportunity for educators to center, affirm, and develop the potentiality of these students as they enter the classroom in terms of their intersecting language, culture, and religion and how this can be used proactively in an educational setting. This intersectionality, as it has come to be known, involves students’ language, race, gender, sexuality, and religion, and it tends to overlap interdependent systems of discrimination and disadvantage (Núñez, 2014). Pre- and in-service educators’ efforts to help newcomer students to integrate and socialize into classrooms and society has become a challenge. They witness their students cast into various situations where they frequently confront racialization and the inevitable face-to-face reality of power imbalances as they negotiate their multiple and overlapping identities (Compton-Lilly, et al., 2017; Núñez, 2014). These form a fundamental component of the racism and imbalances that are often felt by this demographic, and have the potential to lead to individual denigration and inequalities in society and among power hierarchies (Kubota, 2021). As Creese (2019) suggests, the intersectionality of race and identity are an important component in examining how newcomer students succeed. I discuss an intervention that involves critically engaged literacy workshops (CELWs), a research methodology (Ørngreen & Levinsen, 2017) that pre-/in-service educators can use to explore participants’ lived experiences through a multimodal and multilingual framework (Zaidi & Sah, 2024). CELWs include experimenting with focus groups, walking narratives and sharing stories that all work toward acknowledging newcomer students’ intersectional identities as they develop their language and literacy development (Storvang et al., 2018). I showcase how this research will provide an excellent opportunity for pre-/in-service educators to experiment with and implement curricular changes and models that help shape their newcomer students' linguistic, cultural, and literacy trajectories.

Compton-Lilly, C., Papoi, K., Venegas, P., Hamman, L., & Schwabenbauer, B. (2017). Intersectional identity negotiation: The case of young immigrant children. Journal of Literacy Research, 49, 115–140. Creese, G. (2019). “Where are you from?” Racialization, belonging and identity among second-generation African-Canadians. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 42(9), 1476-1494. Kubota, R. (2021). Critical antiracist pedagogy in ELT. ELT Journal, 75(3), 237–246. Núñez, A. (2014). Employing multilevel intersectionality in educational research: Latino identities, contexts, and college access. Educational Researcher, 43(2), 85 –92. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X17724740. Ørngreen, R., & Levinsen, K. (2017). Workshops as a research methodology. The Electronic Journal of eLearning, 15(1), 70-81. Zaidi, R., & Sah, P. K. (2024). Multilingual and multimodal literacy interventions to explore youth’s intersectional identities and racialized experiences: A scoping review. SAGE Open.