Conference Agenda

In 1997, Goodwin published a study examining data gathered from pre-service teachers capturing vignettes that they felt illustrated multicultural issues in schools. Her research participants recounted an incident they had witnessed or experienced and then also provided their analysis of the situation and insight into potential solutions. Her study documented the multicultural stories that pre-service teachers were witnessing in schools and also offered insights into topics and explorations for improved teacher preparation curriculum and pedagogy, attending to issues of equity and justice. Further, her analysis demonstrated the variety and complexity of issues that teacher candidates identified as well as the reality that many of the reported incidents put teachers and children in dysfunctional or oppositional relationships, thus limiting the possibilities of equitable solutions for the multicultural issues identified. Additionally, her study illustrated how teaching and learning are complicated by cultural and racial issues.

According to google scholar, over the almost 30 years since the study was published, it has been cited 169 times, demonstrating a robust impact and suggesting the study has been valued by the field. Over the past 30 years, much has also changed in the world, including increased interconnectedness through advancing communication technologies (Alsaleh, 2024) and many shared global concerns, like climate crises (World Meteorological Organization, 2025) and large-scale migration (International Organization for Migration, 2024). Today we are also seeing major shifts in geo-political and economic relationships globally (Fasslabend, 2025).

Amongst all of this shift and uncertainty, social justice in education scholars are working to build a more just and equitable future across many national boundaries, including across several European countries. And to that end, a team of 20 scholars researching in 8 different nations (Norway, Finland, Germany, France, Iran, Singapore, Canada, and USA) are working to replicate Goodwin’s (1997) study and capture the multicultural/multilingual stories of pre- and in-service teachers as well as paraprofessionals (n = ~330). This un-funded, voluntary collaboration is the ReMaP project: Reflecting on Multiculturalism/-lingualism in Practice: Professional Reflections from Educators. For this study we are asking:

• What kinds of multicultural/multilingual/diversity issues are educators (pre- and in-service teachers, paraprofessionals) concerned with?

• What kinds of questions do these issues raise for educators?

• What solutions do educators recommend in terms of dealing with multicultural/multilingual/diversity dilemmas? How appropriate and effective might these solutions be?

By asking a revised version of the questions Goodwin posed in 1997 across varied linguistic, cultural, and political contexts both inside and outside of Europe, we seek to understand the commonalities in multilingual/multicultural issues across varying contexts, as well as the differences and affordances for working together across national boundaries towards a more just future.

This study is grounded in a recently published conceptual framework (developed by European and US scholars) regarding orientations for diversity to be positive and productive (Viesca et al., 2024). This framework asserts the value of orienting classroom relationships and interactions towards interconnectedness, openness, individual and collective agency, curiosity, and creativity. This study will use these orientations as a lens to understand the multilingual/multicultural stories that are shared, both for their affordances and constraints, as well as presence and absence of the orientations noted above. The goal through this analysis is to provide useful directions for our current and future work in social justice and intercultural education. By replicating and expanding a 30-year-old study, we will empirically engage with past insights to build meaningful perspectives for our future as we work to challenge inequities.

As one of pivotal intercultural practices, multilingual curricula have been promoted and implemented in many societies nowadays (Senar, Janés, Huguet & Ubalde, 2023; European Commission, n.d.). And in East Asian societies like Singapore, Hong Kong, and Philippines, employ distinct multilingual education strategies shaped by colonial histories and ethnic diversity (Goh, 2010; Leung & Li, 2020; Dumanig, David, & Symaco, 2012; Tupas & Martin, 2017). In Taiwan, the legislation of “Development of National Language Act” in 2019 has formally entered a new era of multicultural recognition, legally elevating the status of local languages, such as indigenous languages, Hakka, Taiwanese, Matsu dialect, and Taiwan Sign Language to that of "national languages". This legislative milestone mandated the inclusion of these languages as compulsory courses in the K-12 curriculum, extending instruction into junior and senior high schools starting from the 2022 academic year. However, this "multilingual turn" has coincided with the advanced promotion of the "Bilingual 2030" policy, which privileges English as a primary instrument for national competitiveness. This study argues that the simultaneous enactment of these divergent policies, one rooted in cultural transitional justice and the other in global economic instrumentalism, has created a stratified linguistic hierarchy. While English keeps being framed as a "resource" for global mobility, local languages remain positioned as heritage artifacts. Through a structural analysis of policy documents and qualitative interviews with teachers, this paper utilizes the theoretical metaphor of "Multilingual Islands" (Jordens et al., 2018) to depict how local language education is spatially and structurally contained within the "monolingual sea" of Mandarin dominant schooling. The "Multilingual Islands" framework posits that in educational systems dominated by a single hegemonic language (in Taiwan's case, Mandarin), minority languages (local languages) exist only within strictly demarcated spaces and times. On the one hand, these "islands" are the weekly 40-minute slots allocated for local language instruction. Outside these boundaries—in administration, other academic subjects, and campus rituals—the "sea" of Mandarin (and increasingly English) prevails, rendering the local language invisible and functionally irrelevant to the broader school ecology. On the other hand, from the perspective of human infrastructure, the metaphor of these islands reveals the status of local language teachers, a cohort of teachers who are legally identified as “Teaching Support Teachers". Unlike formal and full-time teachers who are rooted in the school community, these local language teachers must travel constantly between multiple schools to accumulate enough teaching hours to survive, which prevents them from establishing meaningful connections with students or the school administration.

This paper explores educational initiatives within English Language Teaching (ELT) that utilize the Linguistic Landscape (LL) approach to foster collaboration between teachers and students from seperated school systems. The study is situated at the intersection of sociolinguistics, critical pedagogy, and peace education within the context of English Language Teaching (ELT) in conflict-affected societies. It adopts a socio-spatial perspective to examine how the visual representation of languages in public spaces - the Linguistic Landscape (LL) - can be utilized as a pedagogical tool to bridge divides in seperated educational systems.

Linguistic Landscape (LL) refers to the visual representation of languages in public spaces, including signage, graffiti, and other semiotic resources. LL research has evolved significantly, exploring language hierarchies, cultural narratives, and positionality in multilingual settings (Schvarcz & Warren, 2025, Malinowski, 2015, Gorter, 2017).

Theoretically, the research draws on Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial triad, which distinguishes between "conceived space" (official, top-down signage), "perceived space" (the physical environment of daily life), and "lived space" (the symbolic and representational meaning attributed to space by its inhabitants). In areas of intractable conflict, such as the Israeli-Palestinian context, public spaces are often contested arenas where language hierarchies reflect and reinforce power imbalances, exclusion, and ethnic segregation. By bringing LL into the classroom, we move from the "conceived" official narrative to the "lived" experiences of students, allowing for a critical interrogation of the socio-political realities inscribed in their environment.

Central to our approach is the conceptualization of English as a "Third Space" or a neutral mediator. In conflict zones, the local languages (in this case, Hebrew and Arabic) are deeply laden with political and emotional weight, often maintaining a clear power asymmetry. Drawing on the work of Awayed-Bishara (2022) and Khawaja et al. (2021), we argue that English, as an international lingua franca, provides a unique dialogic space where students can negotiate sensitive issues of identity and social justice without the immediate pressure of the local linguistic conflict. This "linguistic neutrality" facilitates a more equitable contact zone for Jewish and Arab learners.

The framework also integrates principles of "Shared Education," originally developed in Northern Ireland to address Catholic-Protestant divides (Gallagher, 2016). This model suggests that sustained, curriculum-based interaction between separated groups can reduce prejudice when structured around common goals. We extend this by proposing a specific "LL Pedagogy" that fosters activism and critical language awareness. This pedagogy encourages students to analyze how signage can marginalize minority identities and advocating for linguistic rights (Shohamy & Pennycook, 2022, Hayik, 2017). To bridge these theories, we propose an original conceptual model: we present an original conceptual model: the Eight-Point Scale of LL Functions for Joint Learning. This scale is theoretically grounded in a progression from lower-order linguistic observation to higher-order critical engagement. It begins with "conceived" functions (language acquisition and policy awareness) and culminates in "lived" functions, where students jointly question power, inequality, and positionality within their shared and separate landscapes. This continuum reflects the transition from learning about the other to learning with the other through the mediation of the environment.

Only very recently since 2017, Lithuanian school first experienced receiving a continuation of steep increase of Cross Culture Kids (CCKs) (Van Reken, 2002), including return immigrants of Lithuanian pupils post-Brexit or due to COVID pandemic, and refugee children due to the recent European political climate. While still lacking a clear framework to aid the integration of these youth whose lives have been utterly disrupted by mobility has yet been provided, there remains a need to view and research this diversity as an asset (Čiuladienė, 2024). In the context of increasing diversity, schools must find solutions to ensure cross-cultural transitional care (CCTC) (Mahoney & Barron, 2020).

The study aims to identify current CCTC approaches in Lithuanian educational institutions, with a focus on how language assimilation is viewed in this process. Three research questions were asked: What are educators' general understanding of CCK in Lithuania? What are the current institutional CCTC practices? What are the experiences and practices of CCKs towards identity-safe cross-cultural transitions?