Reflection promotes language teacher praxis (Mills et al., 2020) and beliefs about linguistic diversity (Lucas & Villegas, 2013). Prior research has focused on written reflections, with less research on multimodal reflections. We examine U.S. pre-service teachers’ (PSTs’) multimodal language portraits as critical reflection (Kusters & De Meulder, 2019; Lau, 2016) and an “alter(n)ative” mode of inquiry that is both alternative (versus traditional) and “alter-ative” (potentially change-promoting) (Prasad, 2014, p. 54). We also posit that these promote humanizing pedagogy, as PSTs examine their sociocultural identities in relation to their students (Huerta, 2011).

Participants were 16 PSTs in methods courses for an undergraduate second language teaching minor or a Master’s degree in TESOL or elementary education. Their backgrounds ranged from no formal teaching experience to experienced teachers and paraprofessionals, many from transnational and/or racialized backgrounds. Using colors, drawings, and writing, they completed a language portrait to describe what influences their identity. The template depicted an outline of a body with boxes for languages, identities, and race. We analyzed the portraits with deductive codes (Fallas-Escobar et al., 2022; Kusters & DeMeulder, 2019; Prasad, 2014) and inductive codes. Two researchers analyzed each portrait and any discrepancies were resolved during whole-team research meetings.

Emerging findings showed that the PSTs identified themselves mainly through different named languages, which is natural given the instructions to reflect on their language learning. Most PSTs placed their “native” language visually on their hearts, using warm colors like red, and also listed several other languages, often placing them on their brains or feet, to denote thinking or traveling. In contrast, they were much less comfortable describing their racial identities: some left this box blank or even removed it. One participant wrote, “I do not think race exists.” Implications for teacher education especially with transnational and other “non-traditional” PSTs will be discussed.

In this presentation, we report on an ongoing project, Teaching English Multilingually through Art, starting in April 2024 and implemented in three provinces in Việt Nam: Quảng Ninh, Tuyên Quang, Thái Nguyên. The project represents a researcher-teacher collaboration between researchers from the University of Glasgow and Thái Nguyên University of Education, 65 teacher-facilitators, ±600 teachers from lower secondary schools and 3 museums. The aim of this project is to encourage creativity, pedagogical innovation and transformation of English classroom and to support teachers’ professional development through TAGs (Teacher Activity Groups).

The project builds on two frameworks: (1) a multi/translingual framework acknowledging that language learning and teaching happen when we draw creatively and critically on all the language resources that learners bring to class (Jones 2020; Li 2018); and (2) an arts-based framework that we have developed through our own previous research (Futro, Faulds, & Hirsu 2024; Hirsu, Zacharias & Futro 2021). With the support of these frameworks, we address English teachers’ current challenges: time for creativity in the classroom, the pressure of a structured curriculum, students struggling with English learning orientation, low resources in remote mountainous areas, and the diversity of learners belonging to different ethnic groups. Our project will be of interest to language teachers who want to develop inclusive activities that approach language learning from a place of resourcefulness. In this sense we will share teachers’ experiences from our project based on data collected through surveys, TAGs observations, teachers’ stories of change and classroom materials. More widely, teachers interested in professional development would have an opportunity to learn about our innovative TAGs model of peer-to-peer learning. This model integrates multiple language and arts-based cultural resources with the support of local stakeholders, e.g., educational programme coordinators in local museums, while ensuring the sustainability of the project beyond the classroom context.

In everyday life, we find several texts that follow specific socio-communicative patterns, with functional compositions, distinct enunciative objectives and defined styles, resulting from human interaction. This diversity is textual genres, which play a crucial role in communicative practice (Marcuschi, 2008). With the Internet, memes emerged as a means of disseminating multimodal digital textual genres, which spread spontaneously and are inserted into sociopolitical contexts through social networks. The teaching of legal language is always related to a culture of using elaborate vocabulary, becoming an instrument of exclusion, leaving those under jurisdiction vulnerable to the exercise of citizenship, a topic that is recurrently criticized and mocked in memes circulating on social media. This qualitative study sought to use a didactic sequence to develop media competence, based on the dimensions defined by Ferrés and Piscitelli (2016) and to promote a reflection on the teaching and learning of languages ​​for specific purposes (legal language) with undergraduate students in Literature at a University in Sorocaba, São Paulo, Brazil. The study stages included: presentation of the meme genre; its production with the proposed theme; reflection on the production process and content; and, the application of the acquired knowledge to develop a legal language teaching plan that met the needs, desires and gaps identified (Hutchinson & Waters, 1987). The analysis of the speeches of the teachers in training, organized by the methodology of Collective Discourse Analysis (Lefèvre & Lefèvre, 2012), revealed a concern with critical legal literacy when creating a teaching plan concerned with combating misinformation and affronts to the full exercise of citizenship.

This paper aims to explicate the teacher education influenced by the two national language policies in Taiwan: the Bilingual 2030 Policy and the Development of National Languages Act. Both policies attempt to address different aspects of language use in Taiwan and significantly impact the nation’s school system. The Bilingual 2030 Policy intends to transform pre-university schooling from a monolingual environment to a bilingual one. The goal is to internationalise the school environment by integrating English into various subjects such as Arts, Music, PE and Health Education. Meanwhile, the goal of the Development of National Languages Act is to revive the local languages such as Taiwanese, Hakka, indigenous languages and Taiwanese sign language. The responsibility of materialising this policy again falls onto education. A crucial issue that emerges from these two policy initiatives is that there are no sufficient bilingual teachers to realise either English-integrated subject teaching or the teaching of national languages. The objective of this paper is to explicate how teacher education programmes respond to two initiatives simultaneously, with a special focus on treating different languages with equity.

The qualitative case study method is applied to explore how the most prominent teacher education institute responds to the fast-changing education environment. The chosen university (the X University) is located in the capital city and trains about one-sixth of preservice teachers in Taiwan annually. Moreover, X University provides the most comprehensive teacher education in Taiwan. With this significance, it is an ideal case to be further explored. Interviewing stakeholders in X University and collecting documents are utilised to get data. The findings offer insights not only to other teacher education institutes in Taiwan but also to international readers who care about language rights and teacher education.