Teacher Education About Multilingualism

Teacher Education About Multilingualism

Background
The project "Teacher Education About Multilingualism" (henceforth TEAM) aims to educate pre-service and in-service teachers in HEI settings about various aspects of multilingualism and bilingualism (the term bilingualism is used to capture both). Basic and up-to-date knowledge about bilingualism is often missing from teacher training curricula in HEIs across Europe, bilingualism often being mentioned in the context of educating students with special educational needs. This situation is unsatisfactory in present-day Europe, where migration both within the EU and from non-EU countries is a major contributor to demographic change. Teachers who have been working in previously homogeneous communities are increasingly more likely to have students with the experience of migration in their classrooms, both migrants and re-emigrants. Against this background, it is vitally important to provide teachers and future teachers, as well as other education professionals, with basic knowledge about bilingualism and multilingualism in the context of education.

Objectives
Therefore, TEAM aims to:
1. strengthen the professional training of teachers and other educators in HEIs by preparing them to better deal with linguistic and cultural diversity in the classroom, 2. prepare teachers and other educators to better respond to the needs of students with migration backgrounds by making their teaching more socially relevant and inclusive, 3. improve the quality of academic instruction by creating a new interdisciplinary course curriculum and teaching resources linking teacher training with relevant and up-to-date bilingualism research.

Implementation
In order to meet these objectives TEAM has developed a comprehensive and interdisciplinary curriculum to educate teachers about various aspects of bilingualism, with a focus on linguistic approaches to bilingualism, neurocognitive processes in bilingualism and second language acquisition, social and cultural aspects of multilingualism, as well as approaches to and strategies implemented in multilingual education. In the next step, audiovisual materials and interactive activities were designed and prepared to teach this curriculum. The produced materials were then implemented by partners in their own teaching at HEIs, either as a separate course, or to complement existing modules and courses, in both traditional classroom and/or blended-learning environments. All the classroom-tested course materials were then put together to form an open education resource and made available to the general public through a dedicated YouTube channel and an open-access Moodle course. The results were evaluated by peer academics and students, and disseminated to the general public through a series of multiplier events carried out by all the partners.

Results
The intellectual outputs produced by the project include:
- TEAM syllabus for the planned course (IO1),
- TEAM audiovisual materials for the presentation of the course content (IO2),
- TEAM e-learning course to be taught at partner universities (IO3), and
- TEAM open education resource (IO4).

IO1 has been made available to the end-users on the Moodle platform (IO4) as The Manual.
IO2 consists of video-recorded interviews, screencasts and testimonials, altogether 88 videos, uploaded to a dedicated YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/@TEAMultilingual).
IO3 was meant as a course taught at partner universities, with partners uploading course materials to learning platforms used by their universities. All the materials produced and used in IO3, i.e., interactive activities, were included in IO4. The course materials and activities have been piloted with an estimated 500 students at partner universities during the project lifetime, before being included in the final resource (IO4).
IO4 is an open-access Moodle course: https://teamcourse.bilingualism-matters.org, redirecting to: https://fon.wa.amu.edu.pl/moodle/index.php.

The Partners:

UNIWERSYTET IM. ADAMA MICKIEWICZA W POZNANIU, Poland - Coordinator

ARISTOTELIO PANEPISTIMIO THESSALONIKIS, Greece
BAR ILAN UNIVERSITY, Israel
SVEUCILISTE U RIJECI, Croatia
THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, United Kingdom
UNIVERSIDAD DE GRANADA, Spain
UNIVERSITA PER STRANIERI DI SIENA, Italy
UNIVERSITAT KONSTANZ, Germany
UNIWERSYTET JAGIELLONSKI, Poland