Conference Agenda

This symposium will discuss the development of language teachers’ plurilingual identities and competences in the context of equity, democracy and social justice. It will explore teaching practices in four distinctive environments of primary school teachers in Scotland, lower secondary and higher education teachers in Iceland, and teacher trainees in Spain. We will discuss the reasons for including plurilingual competences into all educational settings and analyse ways in which these competences can be developed in classrooms to strengthen equitable, socially just teaching practices. We will consider how teachers reflect, respond, and make meaning of their own and their learners’ plurilingual identities and competencies, how they navigate them in formal school settings and how they can use them for learning and teaching. Futro will discuss how visual art was used by teachers in Scotland for developing plurilingual practices in teaching Polish in primary schools, Nishida and Emilsson Peskova will explore their plurilingual identities as teacher educators at the University of Iceland through senryu poetry, Emilsson Peskova will present on how certified immigrant teachers utilize their plurilingual repertoires in their teaching at lower secondary level, and Sugranyes Ernest will discuss the concept of plurilingual wellbeing by analysing how the teacher trainees’ relationship with their own languages affects the ways they teach those languages.

Embracing and developing plurilingual identities and competencies of learners and teachers in school settings aligns with the principles of equity and social justice. All discussed projects view the theoretical framework of plurilingualism as embedded in the theory of social justice and use qualitative research methods, including self-study, semi-structured interviews, and arts-based inquiry. Presented findings point to how equity in the classroom requires plurilingual approaches, such as regarding learning and teaching strategies through a plurilingual lens, translanguaging, and strengthening plurilingual competencies, identities and wellbeing of learners and teachers.