Conference Agenda

Since European societies are multilingual and culturally diverse, schools and their educators face the challenge—and responsibility—of ensuring that migrant children have their linguistic and cultural rights respected. In this context, Heritage Language (HL) education has emerged as an important research field where social justice, identity sustainability, and intercultural education intersect. This symposium connects three studies conducted in European countries: one Finland, another one in Sweden, and a third one across five additional European countries. They discuss how HL initiatives can promote equitable educational opportunities, minority languages, and the well-being of migrant communities. By portraying Portuguese as a Heritage Language in different European contexts, the symposium highlights how language education can serve as a tool for empowerment, recognition, and social inclusion. Together, the presentations explore pedagogical innovation, pluricentric cultural approaches, and the often-overlooked role of religion in shaping migrant identities. The session invites participants to reflect on how intercultural education can move beyond symbolic inclusion and address the structural and cultural dimensions of justice in multilingual Europe. In the first presentation, an innovative literacy initiative from the Guimarães Rosa Institute (IGR) is analysed. One of the IGR’s objectives is to ensure equitable access to linguistic and cultural heritages for Brazilian families in Finland. In accordance with Articles 29 and 30 of the “Convention on the Rights of the Child” (UNICEF, 1989), the project affirms children’s right to maintain their family language and culture. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s conception of education as an act of liberation (Freire, 1974), the course motivates children to recognize their ancestry and develop agency through their heritage language.

The second presentation focuses on the project Curtindo a Língua Portuguesa na Suécia (Enjoying the Portuguese Language in Sweden), developed in Gothenburg, one of Sweden’s major hubs for Brazilian migration. Adopting a pluricentric approach (Melo-Pfeifer & Souza, 2021) to culture and children’s literature, the project positions heritage language as a “precious commodity”. In particular, the presentation explores how the project fosters cultural transmission, strengthens family bonds, and supports migrant children’s identity sustainability. It argues that such initiatives are essential for promoting intercultural education that values diversity not as an add‑on, but as a core dimension of social justice in European schools.

Lastly, the third presentation examines the role of religion for migrant groups, as reported by Brazilian teachers of Portuguese as a Heritage Language working in complementary schools in England, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. Using the concept of religious identity (Hemming & Madge, 2011), the study reveals how teachers’ and learners’ religious backgrounds can affect classroom dynamics, even though religion is often excluded from the host‑country educational policies. The findings suggest that sustainable heritage language learning requires acknowledging religious diversity as part of intercultural education. The presentation proposes collaboration between migrant faith communities and complementary schools to create continuity in learners’ experiences and enhance their well-being.

Together, the three presentations demonstrate how linguistic rights, cultural sustainability, and religious identity intersect in the everyday lives of migrant families. The symposium invites educators, policymakers, and researchers to rethink intercultural education in Europe as a transformative project—one that recognizes diversity, challenges exclusion, and supports the strengthening of migrant communities.

The “Convention on the Rights of the Child” (UNICEF, 1989) establishes in Articles 29 and 30 that every child has the right to learn and maintain the language and culture of their family. In this context, the teaching of Portuguese as a heritage language plays an essential role in preserving cultural identity, promoting social inclusion, and safeguarding the linguistic rights of families. The Portuguese Early Literacy Course developed by Instituto Guimarães Rosa (IGR) Helsinki exemplifies this approach by offering multilingual children the opportunity to learn the language of their ancestors in an institutional, inclusive, and welcoming environment. Based on the “social justice lens” proposed by Ortega (2020), we understand that ensuring equitable access to the languages surrounding a speaker necessarily includes the possibility of becoming literate in their heritage language, and not solely in the language of instruction used in school. This contributes, among other aspects, to the institutionalization of the heritage language within the school environment and to its consequent “demarginalization.” The IGR Helsinki initiative thus emerges as an important tool for promoting equitable access to Portuguese language education within the Finnish educational context. Furthermore, the course’s pedagogical approach aligns with Paulo Freire’s perspective (1974), which conceives education as an act of liberation—one that enables children to recognize their own histories and their potential as social agents who will be able to rely on their heritage language to act in diverse contexts in the future. In this presentation, we will share the full process of implementing the course and the pedagogical tools used in the development of the instructional materials. In this presentation, we will share the full process of implementing the course and the pedagogical tools used in the development of the instructional materials, which were collected from two digital manuals provided online by the Brazilian Education Ministry (Martins et al., 2022; MEC, 2022). Since the materials were created aiming at the teaching of a mother tongue, the novelty of this work relies on the materials' adaptation to the context of heritage language teaching. In addition, feedback collected from parents at the end of the course will be discussed in order to assess the impact of the lessons on the students’ linguistic development, the strengthening of their heritage identity, and the legitimization of Portuguese as a language of instruction and knowledge acquisition.

Freire, P. (1974). Pedagogia do Oprimido. Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra. Martins, Bruno et al. (2022). Manual do Aluno [recurso eletrônico]. Brasília: Secretaria de Alfabetização, Ministério da Educação (SEALF/MEC). (https://alfabetizacao.mec.gov.br/images/pdf/manual_do_aluno_PBA.pdf) MEC, 2022. Práticas de alfabetização (https://alfabetizacao.mec.gov.br/images/pdf/abecedario_praticas_de_alfabetizacao_082022.pdf ). UNICEF (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child (https://www.unicef.org/child-rights-convention/convention-text) Accessed on 5.1.2026. Ortega, L. (2020). The study of heritage language development from a bilingualism and social justice perspective. Language Learning, 70, 15-53.

Sub-paper had to be withdrawn.

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Sustainable development refers to the processes adopted to achieve the long-term goal of a more sustainable world (UNESCO, 2012), i.e. a world fit to answer the needs of present and future generations. Education plays a key role in these processes, as highlighted by UNESCO´s (2012) Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) responses to the present challenges faced by the environment, economy and society. Besides learning about sustainability, ESD involves the advancement of critical thinking and problem-solving about all dimensions of well-being (Aslan & Curle, 2024). Religion is one of these dimensions (Souza, forthcoming), and one which has been identified as leading to experiences of social inequalities by language learners (Mambu, 2022). In this presentation, I highlight the importance of religion for migrant groups and report on data of a larger study which explored identity and religious issues in language teaching. More specifically, I share data provided by Brazilian teachers of Portuguese as a Heritage Language (HL) in complementary schools in five European countries – England, Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. The study draws on the concept of religious identity (Hemming & Madge, 2011) to better understand in which ways religion influences the teaching practices of this group of teachers. The data were collected via an online questionnaire and qualitative semi-structured interviews. The results indicate that educational policies in the host countries lead to the exclusion of religion from the curriculum implemented by the Brazilian complementary schools. However, Afro-Brazilian religions are covered as part of Brazil´s cultural heritage, in exclusion of a variety of other religions present in the country. Therefore, I argue that, in order to achieve sustainable heritage language learning, considerations about a diversity of religious identities should be made going beyond an intercultural communication perspective, the field in which religion is commonly addressed in secular schools (Wane et al. 2011). In conclusion, I suggest that collaboration be developed between migrant faith settings and complementary schools with a view to promote a continuity of the HL teachers´ and learners´ experiences between the two settings and, thus, impact positively in their wellbeing.

Aslan, S. & Curle, S. (2024) Institutionalising English as a foreign language teachers for global sustainability: Perceptions of education for sustainable development in Turkey, International Journal of Educational Research, 125(102353): 1-12. Hemming, P. & Madge, N. (2011) Researching children, youth and religion: identity, complexity and agency, Childhood, 19(1): 38-51. Souza, A. (2026, forthcoming) Realising the power of religion in the experiences of heritage language learners. In: Liu, Y. & Anderson, J. (eds.) The Professional Knowledge Base for Heritage Language Education in a Multilingual World. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Mambu, J. (2023) Embedding Sustainable Development Goals into critical English language teaching and learning, Critical Inquiry in Language Studies, 20(1): 46-76. DOI: 10.1080/15427587.2022.2099863 UNESCO. (2012) Education for sustainable development: Available: https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/926unesco9.pdf. Accessed: 08 Aug 2025. Wane, N. N; Manyimo, E. L.; Ritskes, E.J. (orgs.) (2011) Spirituality, Education & Society An Integrated Approach. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.

Context

Europe has become an increasingly attractive destination for Chinese students driven by the global standing of European universities, the expansion of English-taught programmes, and internationalisation initiatives such as Erasmus+. As a result, Chinese students now form one of the largest non-European student groups across many higher education systems. This growing mobility has important implications for teaching and learning, particularly in relation to understanding Chinese international students' classroom participation habits, communication norms, and interaction patterns. Understanding how Chinese students engage in European classrooms is therefore essential for promoting inclusive pedagogy, equitable participation, and the effective internationalisation of higher education.

Problem

Despite the growing presence of Chinese students in Western higher education, deficit-based assumptions continue to characterise them as silent, passive, or disengaged learners. Although extensive research demonstrates that silence can be a culturally informed and meaningful form of participation, this understanding has not been fully integrated into teaching practice. As a result, educators often misinterpret silence as a lack of ability or motivation, particularly in online and internationalised classrooms where verbal participation is privileged as a marker of engagement.

On the one hand, although silence is frequently framed as a 'problem' within educational discourse, the majority of scholars who have examined this phenomenon are Chinese researchers themselves, rather than those who most often characterise it as problematic.

The problem addressed in this paper is therefore not the absence of research on Chinese students’ classroom interaction, but the persistence of narrow pedagogical frameworks that fail to recognise silence as a legitimate mode of academic presence. By re-examining existing literature through the lens of culturally responsive teaching practice, this study challenges entrenched assumptions and argues for a culturally informed reconceptualisation of silence. It aims to bridge the gap between theory and pedagogy and support more 'non-exclusive' approaches to student engagement in diverse higher education contexts.

Aims and research question

This study adopts a constructive orientation that moves beyond asking why Chinese students are silent and instead poses a forward-looking question: how can Chinese students’ classroom silence be understood and utilised as a culturally meaningful and pedagogically valuable form of engagement, and which strategies can effectively support their active learning in Western higher education contexts?

Guided by this question, the study seeks to prompt a shift in pedagogical practice that recognises and values diverse modes of participation, with particular attention to the learning preferences and experiences of Chinese students, who constitute the largest group of international students in Scottish universities, where the resaercher is located.

To address this research question, a narrative literature review was selected due to its selective and goal-oriented approach. Narrative reviews prioritise studies that are most relevant and representative of the research topic (Ferrari, 2015), allowing for the qualitative interpretation of culturally nuanced concepts such as silence (Baumeister & Leary, 1997; Greenhalgh et al., 2018). In contrast to systematic reviews, which seek comprehensive coverage and aim to identify research gaps, narrative reviews enable a more in-depth exploration of the topic and provide space for the researcher’s critical analysis and interpretation (Greenhalgh et al., 2018). This approach facilitates theory development and reflexive engagement (Ferrari, 2015), aligning closely with the paper’s objective of generating pedagogical insights informed by both literature and classroom practice.