Meeting the Needs of Students in a Multilingual Classroom: Linking Research to Practice

Werklund School of Education

December 6, 2016

Hosted by the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, the session introduced research from Dr. Rahat Naqvi, Dr. Patricia Enciso, and Dr. Jacqueline D'Warte. A primary take away from the research and following small group explorations of the material and its application in classrooms was:

• by engaging learners as linguistic ethnographers of their own languages and literacy practices, curriculum and classroom practice could be improved for all learners, especially those with English as a second language.

The engagement of learners in presenting content and assignments in combinations of their first language and English was presented as a pedagogical approach that could be used any where and did not interfere with required curriculum outcomes in any way.  Concept acquisition and use improved as learners could bring multiple linguistic tools to bear on challenges presented by instructors.

The opportunity for CEFL classrooms is to open up curriculum exploration by learners through the engagement of the learners' other languages. Concepts and ideas have different representations in different languages and this offers an opportunity for a different kind of exploration by learners.