Conference Agenda

Post Primary Languages Ireland (PPLI), a unit of the Department of Education in Ireland, has responsibility for implementing key actions in Languages Connect – Ireland’s Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education 2017-2026 which was published by the Irish Government in December 2017. Bower et el. (2020) state that despite CLIL expanding globally, anglophone settings ‘where English is already the default medium of instruction for schooling (and society at large)’ (p.3) are under-researched. This paper outlines a pilot project which designed and implemented a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) 6-week unit of learning to support and reinforce MFL teaching and learning in post-primary schools in Ireland. The aims of the project were to elicit evidence that would inform the implementation of a viable CLIL approach for MFL in Irish post-primary schools, enhance the quality of language learning, and encourage further research in this area.

This project took place nationwide in Ireland where, although Irish is the national and first official language, ‘only 4.2% [of the population] use [Irish] daily outside the education system’ as their first or main language (Batardière et al., 2022). 26 post-primary teachers were recruited as action researchers, over two academic years, from different school demographics. Qualitative data was collected through semi-structured interviews, surveys, focus groups and reflection journals. Emerging themes from the research suggest participation in the CLIL project had a profound impact on students' self-concept as language learners and the positive CLIL environment influenced learners’ engagement in several ways. Overall students preferred integrated language learning over traditional language instruction, emphasising the opportunities to speak the language.

This arts-informed case study explores using art-based learning to promote culturally sustaining English pedagogy for high school students in Burkina Faso (Paris, 2012). A 2-week arts-based workshop will have participants engage in English language learning with local cultural artforms like storytelling as griots, slam poetry, and forum theater. Through interviews, observations, and student work, the study investigates the impacts of situating English language learning within 40-60 multilingual students’ cultural knowledge and identities. It examines student and teacher perceptions of this approach centering learner cultures. By elevating local creative traditions using critical pedagogies, the research challenges linguistic hierarchies and deficit views of multilingual populations. The interview data will be transcribed using Microsoft Office 365 transcription software and analyzed with MAXQDA. A multimodal sentiment analysis will be conducted (Zhu et al., 2023) using OpenCV and triangulated with the interviews. The findings can shape teacher training and policies to reimagine language learning as a site of empowerment and engagement. Insights may transfer to instruction for migrant-background youth in Western schools.

Cole, A. L., & Knowles, J. G. (2008). Arts-informed research. Handbook of the arts in qualitative research: Perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues, 55-70.

Eisner, E. W. (2002). The arts and the creation of mind. Yale University Press.

Hale, Thomas A. 1998. Griots and Griottes: Masters of Words and Music. Indiana

University Press.

Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American

Merriam, S. B., & Tisdell, E. J. (2016). Qualitative research: A guide to design and implementation (4th ed). John Wiley & Sons.

Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational researcher, 41(3), 93-97.

Zhu, L., Zhu, Z., Zhang, C., Xu, Y., & Kong, X. (2023). Multimodal sentiment analysis based on fusion methods: A survey. Information Fusion, 95, 306-325.

This presentation explores the fallout of a policy change, namely the end of the French national program called l’Enseignement des langues et cultures d’origine (ELCO, the teaching of languages and cultures of origin), from the perspective of one teacher’s personal experience. I present my reading of a semi-structured interview interwoven with policy background and analysis throughout. I frame the data using Bakhtin’s theories of language and dialogue (1981) as well as work on multilingual teachers (Kramsch & Zhang, 2018), and draw from studies wherein interviews with teachers are read as narratives of identities and pedagogies tied up in subjective experiences of globalization (Menard-Warwick, 2014).

The ELCO program aimed to bring teachers from countries with immigrant populations in France to teach younger generations the language of their parents’ home country. The focal participant is an Arabic teacher on Corsica who is retiring after a more than thirty-year career due to the decision to end the ELCO programs. I compare Corsican and Arabic as competing heritage languages on the island, and unpack how the French term “origine” (origin) gets racialized in policy discourses with reference to immigrant languages in the French context (Smith, 2019). The interview sheds light on the affective dimensions of larger forces at play, namely a shift to neoliberal organizational structures in language curricula. I conclude with a discussion of mediation, embodied by the language teacher in complex interplays of multilingualism and globalization on Corsica.

Bakhtin, M.M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays.

Kramsch, C. & Zhang, L. (2018). The Multilingual Instructor: What Foreign Language Teachers Say about Their Experience and Why It Matters.

Menard-Warwick, J. (2014). English Language Teachers on the Discursive Faultlines: Identities, Ideologies, and Pedagogies.

Smith, M. A. (2019). Senegal Abroad: Linguistic Borders, Racial Formations, and Diasporic Imaginaries.

The increasing number of Mandarin Chinese learners in the Kingdom of Cambodia has highlighted the importance of Mandarin Chinese education planning and policy implemented by the Federation of Khmer Chinese in Cambodia (the FKCC) at Chinese schools in Cambodia to support the students to obtain learning achievement. While research has been done in the fields of macro level policy formulation and promotion, there has been little research on the implementation of planning and policy intentions in Chinese school practices in Cambodia. Adopting a case study approach, this paper examines the polices regarding Chinese school education in Cambodia, as well as challenges from the local Chinese schools in the implementation of the FKCC’s language planning goals and policies. Mixed research methods were employed through document analysis and interviews with the FKCC policymaker and school leaders involved in the Chinese school education. The findings revealed that in responding to shifting macro-level policy from the Cambodian government so as to seek for a space for the continuation of Chinese school education in Cambodian national education system, the FKCC has exercised its power as an authorized and influential agency within the Chinese community in the planning of Chinese school education transformation. However, findings indicate that the FKCC’s policy intention of the transformation of language planning goals for Chinese school education in Cambodia is wavering between modernisation and heritage. Tensions exist between the macro, meso and micro levels in the planning of Chinese school education in Cambodia. The author proposes that successful implementation in the local schools will require language planners to firstly clarify the positioning and language planning goals (modernisation or heritage or both), and then provide guidance and support them to fulfil their responsibility in response to the transformation of language planning goals.