You're kindly invited to our next virtual Plurilingual Lab Speaker Series event with Dr. Maria González Davies, Ramon Llull University, Barcelona:
Teachers as Changemakers: A Formative Model for an Integrated Plurilingual Approach to Language Learning
For some years now, scholars and teachers alike have explored means to adapt to increasingly plurilingual and intercultural environments through an informed search for open translingual spaces where all voices meet and learn from each other. However, embracing a plurilingual language teaching perspective is not an easy task for teachers since it involves deeply reconceptualizing their classroom practices. Here, I will present the formative intervention model resulting from a long-term study that included six financed projects (2003-2022) whose main outcome is an integrated plurilingual approach to language learning (IPA). It stems from observations of the use of natural plurilingual practices in–supposedly–monolingual language learning contexts, and from the belief in the potential cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-emotional benefits for students and teachers working in plurilingual contexts. We aimed to narrow the gap between academic research and classroom practices and, so, set out to investigate the situated (i.e. contextualized) needs of teachers in their specific working contexts to provide support for them to integrate plurilingual practices ecologically in their syllabus. Finally, we analysed the impact that plurilingual teaching practices had on the plurilingual competence of the participating students. Some examples of the resulting didactic sequences will be presented, too.
Language of presentation: English, with examples in other languages
Bio: Freelance translator and an Associate Professor at the Ramon Llull University (Barcelona) until her retirement, Dr. Maria González Davies has worked as a Primary and Secondary School teacher and has collaborated with the Translation and Foreign Languages Programmes in Spanish universities as well as in Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, the UK, Italy and China. She is Head of the Research Group Intercultural and Interlinguistic Competence until 2022, author of books such as Multiple Voices in the Translation Classroom (John Benjamins) and co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Translation and Education with Sara Laviosa (U. Bari).
When: March 27, 2025 (Thursday)
Time: 12pm-1:30pm (EST, Montreal)
Mode of delivery: synchronous via Zoom
Registration required. Please click here.
This is a public event and all are welcome. This Speaker Series is sponsored by Concordia University's Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, and co-organized by the BILD Research Group and McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE).
A recording will be made available on the Plurilingual Lab YouTube channel.
