Multilingual Education and India

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

It was quite energising to participate last week in the Asia-Pacific MLE conference in Bangkok. Having so many educationalists come together to learn about how multilingual education is implemented in different settings was inspiring. There were several presenters from India, but  the presentations from other countries were also quite relevant for the Indian context. The 7th International Conference on Language and Education was hosted by UNESCO in Bangkok from 4 to 6 October, 2023. The conference had 475 participants from civil society, academic institutions, and governments. High-level policymakers from over twenty governments in Asia and the Pacific also attended. The Indian government was represented by Ms. Archana Sharma Awasthi, Joint Secretary in the Department of School Education and Literacy, MHRD. India was quite prominently represented at  the conference. Prof. Tsimpli Ianthi shared on the first day about her research on the value of using multiple languages and experiments

  Photo credit: https://asiapacificmle.net/conference/2023/   The Multilingual Education Conference in Thailand has always been a great place to meet with fellow-educationalists with a passion (or at least interest!) for Multilingual Education. Because of Covid it was a bit delayed, but I was glad to learn there will be one this year in October. I hope there will be many presentations from India. There are only a few weeks left to get abstracts submitted.  See the announcement copied below. _________________________________________________________________________________ The Asia Pacific Multilingual Education Working Group (MLE WG) is pleased to announce the 7th International Conference on Language and Education to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, this 4 - 6 October 2023, and the first Call for Abstracts . The seventh edition will address multilingual education for transformative education systems and resilient futures. UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, UNICEF East