A Report: Webinar on Multilingual Pedagogies
It is not often that a webinar about MLE attracts a large group of participants, but if you have a relevant topic and good speakers it can be done! The recent webinar on multilingual pedagogies dealt with a reality that we often face in Indian classrooms that multiple languages are spoken by the learners. The webinar speakers had a good mix of theory and practice. No wonder it attracted a broad audience!
A Webinar: ‘Multilingual pedagogies for all: Language-inclusive teaching and learning’ was hosted by The Asia-Pacific Multilingual Education Working Group, UNESCO Bangkok and UNICEF East Asia and Pacific on the 9th of July 2024. The presentations were aimed at discussing practical solutions for preparing teachers to lead multilingual classrooms through best practice models in various countries such as India, the Philippines, Thailand and Australia. The speakers were Kathleen Heugh from the University of South Australia, Sangsok Son from SIL Intl, Dhir Jhingran of the Language and Learning Foundation(India), and Maria Mercedes Arzadon from the University of the Philippines-Diliman.
Prof. Kathleen Heugh, Professor of Language Education and Multilingualism, University of South Australia spoke on ‘Translation, translanguaging and transknowledging pedagogies in multilingual classrooms’. Her presentation explored three key pedagogies – translation, translanguaging and transknowledging and how they can be used in classrooms by both multilingual and monolingual teachers. Prof. Maria Mercedes Arzadon, associate professor at the University of Philippines-Diliman spoke on the topic: ‘Animating learning for all through multilingual storybooks.’ Her presentation focussed on the MLE teacher training which was done using multilingual storybooks teaching basic literacy. There was also a focus on local practices used in development of MLE resources and its usage.
Dr. Dhir Jhingran who is the Founder/Director of the Language Learning Foundation India shared his presentation: ‘One size does not fit all: Varied multilingual strategies for diverse language contexts in India.’ This presentation spoke of the need for a variety of MLE techniques in a diverse linguistic scenario as India. Classroom learning and teaching techniques were presented from four districts of India.
Dr Sangsok Son, a Consultant for Literacy and Education (SIL Intl) presented on the topic: ‘Translanguaging pedagogy for the transformation of teacher’s stance and performance.’ This presentation spoke about how Translanguaging helped teachers in Thailand(Chiang Mai) include home languages using bilingualism in classroom teaching thereby also promoting non-dominant languages. (More on translanguaging can be found on this website https://www.translanguagingeducation.org).
The targeted audience were policy makers, educators, researchers and anyone interested in multilingual education. The presentations were helpful as they not only outlined useful multilingual pedagogies to promote the use of the mother tongue but also provided valuable practical examples from real classrooms, where these pedagogies are implemented. The Asia- Pacific Multilingual Education Group provides such resources and webinars regularly. Please follow this link for more information on this webinar, including the presenter’s bios, concept note and also a recording of the session.
Karsten, in collaboration with Upasana Lepcha
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