GREIP Grup de Recerca en Ensenyament i Interacció Plurilingües

Our 3rd edition of the GREIP PhD school has just finished. The focus was very much on practical strategies and knowledge. This year the activities were held later in the term in order to coincide with the PhD yearly reviews. All in all, rather intense but extremely productive days for our PhD candidates.

Aquest darrer dissabte dia 7 de maig es va dur a terme la cinquena formació amb AFEX emmarcada dins del projecte CULT. En aquest cas, les participants del projecte es van trobar per reprendre algunes idees clau sobre l'enfocament didàctic plurilingüe. En una primera part, les dinamitzadores i practicants van compartir una sèrie de bones pràctiques que havien dut a terme a les seves classes. A partir d'aquí, conjuntament, van estar analitzant la vessant comunicativa d'aquestes tasques tot pensant a fer propostes de millora per a extreure'n el màxim de profit. En una segona part, van treballar el procés de creació d'una campanya aprofitant per elaborar una campanya de queixa en relació les mancances actuals que presenta l'educació obligatòria en el sistema educatiu de Catalunya. A través d'una conversa de reflexió sobre aquestes carències detectades en base les seves experiències pròpies, les participants van elaborar una campanya en format de vídeo que serà editat per difondre a les mestres de l'escola actual.

The Eduplus Network has completed its activities with a face-to-face 2 day seminar (after 2 years of online events). The international event was well-attended, with participants from several countries. As part of the event, the intern for CULT, Irene Calderer, was invited to take part in a roundtable of young researchers to discuss their perspectives on plurilingual education, as experienced in the classrooms. The seminar counted on several international experts, who explained their most recent research in the field: Dr. Raphael Berthele, Dr. Enrica Piccardo and Dr. Gessica de Angelis as well as local representation through Dr. Olga Esteve and Montserrat Montegut. After two years of collaboration, the research groups (CILCEAL, CLA, DREAM, GLAUR, GREIP, LAELA) will finalize the network project with a publication outlining the results of reports on plurilingual education in four autonomous regions of Spain. This and other output will be available before the end of the year.

GREIP fue invitado a presentar nuestro trabajo en una mesa redonda dirigida a grupos de investigación que realizan investigación y formación docente en educación plurilingüe. La invitación vino de EURAC Research, un centro de investigación independiente en Bolzano, Italia, con un enfoque en el trabajo interdisciplinario. El encuentro incluyó a nuestro colega de colaboración a largo plazo, Josep Maria Cots, investigador principal del grupo CLA en la Universitat de Lleida.

En el marc del  projecte CULT (Constructing a collaborative understanding of learning and teaching for the XXI century), el passat dissabte, dia 19 de març, va tenir lloc una nova formació. En aquesta ocasió, es va centrar en el treball per tasques i en l’enfocament comunicatiu per a l’aprenentatge de llengües i, concretament, sobre com pot portar-se a terme en el programa AFEX-AFFM. La sessió va ser organitzada col·laborativament entre Irene Calderer, becària i estudiant de 4t curs del Grau d’Educació Primària, i Júlia Llompart, IP del projecte CULT. Durant la sessió, les participants, dinamitzadores del programa i practicants dels Graus de Pedagogia i d’Educació Social de la UAB, van poder experimentar l’enfocament comunicatiu mentre aprenien italià, van poder proposar i discutir sobre tasques comunicatives i dues de les practicants van presentar una proposta de tallers sobre coneixements que va ser discutida i ampliada per les participants. Sens dubte, aquesta ha estat una de les sessions més pràctica que ha impulsat a la reflexió conjunta sobre l’ensenyament i l’aprenentatge a partir de la comunicació. Així mateix, es va crear un espai segur de discussió i col·laboració entre totes les participants.

Melinda Dooly gave a talk to language teachers from around the world on the topic of transglobal communicative competences, teacher technology know-how and future innovations in language education, including perspectives on using Augmented and Virtual Reality in the classroom.

El passat dissabte dia 26 de febrer es va dur a terme la tercera de les formacions CULT-AFEX en el marc del projecte CULT (Constructing a collaborative understanding of learning and teaching for the XXI century, Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, PID2020-115446RJ-I00). En aquesta ocasió, les participants (dinamitzadores del programa AFEX-AFFM i practicants i estudiants de la Facultat de Ciències de l'Educació) van poder realitzar un taller de poesia plurilingüe guiat pel doctorand Diego Albuquerque (i creat per ell col·laborativament amb professorat i dinamitzadora d'un dels centres on es fa AFEX-AFFM) i la Claudia Vallejo . Així mateix, després del taller, la Luci Nussbaum va guiar una discussió sobre el plurilingüisme, l'ensenyament de llengües i les possibilitats d'una innovació que respongui a la realitat plurilingüe actual.

The last day of the training week was especially interactive and fun for all the participants involved as we gave feedback and ideas on our plans for the LoCALL app and then, in smaller working groups, created 'pop-up' podcasts for the project website. Extremely insightful observations that underscored the amount of creative thinking and learning that has taken place during these intensive five days. Results stemming from the 5-day Online Training Workshop will be made available in the project website soon.

Apart from the online working groups busy creating games for the app, Dr. Frank Monaghan, from Open University, UK, delivered a  a brilliant talk about 'fanslanguaging' (focused on banners made by football fans from Liverpool). With references from political identities to mentions of Bahktin and Plato, the presentation was highly informative and stimulating. Dr Monaghan's session left all of the participants with loads of new ideas and food for thought regarding innovative ways to use linguistic landscapes in our teaching.

Today was the first day of the online training week for the LoCALL project, hosted by the GREIP team. This week's focus is on interdisciplinary perspective on Linguistic Landscapes. Today we started with a general presentation of the project, given by the IP of the project, Sílvia Melo-Pfeifer, the overview of the week, presented by Melinda Dooly and then a roundtable by two experienced teacher-researchers in LL, Lisa Brinkmann and Julia van Rosen. All in all, a great start to the week.

Following the talk on findings from VR4ED: Virtual Reality for Education, a public-private-partnership (T-217-333-2670), given at the AAAL 2022 conference in the USA in March, the Future of Education department of AR/VR/Metaverse Product Research & Innovation has reached out to the GREIP members to know more about the study being carried out with 6th graders studying English as a Foreign Language. Thus far, the study has designed and implemented 6 weeks of activities in different VR environments. The project is a collaboration between GREIP (Melinda Dooly), the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (Randall Sadler), Escola Purificació Salas i Xandri (Mónica López) and Immerse VR platform (Trisha Thrasher). Preliminary results show that students in 6th form make use of action-oriented language use at B1 and B2 levels in highly complex, technology-mediated environments.

On 4th May, GREIP PhD candidate, Xiaoting Yu, gave a presentation at ‘International Conference of Contemporary China Studies (2022): East and West Contact and Dialogue’ on the topic of ‘Alleviating Teacher Professional Isolation through Virtual Community of Practice. She shared her hands-on experience from her work with the VALIANT project, highlighting the importance and relevance multiple collaborations online might have for reducing Chinese teachers’ isolation abroad and support their professional development. Xiaoting Yu (PhD student), along with Dr. Melinda Dooly (supervisor), are in the VALIANT which is an Erasmus+KA3 project.

Mónica López and Melinda Dooly co-presented, along with Dr. Randall Sadler and Tricia Thrasher (University of Illinois Urbana Champaign) some preliminary findings from their study on immersive VR language teaching and learning in primary education. The hybrid presentation given at the American Association of Applied Linguistics (Pittsburgh, USA) was well-attended and was followed with a lively Q & A.

Claudia Vallejo va defensar amb èxit la seva tesi doctoral el 16 de març de 2022. La doctora Vallejo va presentar una defensa oral impecable davant d'un prestigiós tribunal internacional: Artur Noguerol, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (president); Maria González-Davies, Universitat Ramon Llull (secretaria); Adriana Patiño Santos, Universitat de Southampton (vocal). Els membres del tribunal van destacar la qualitat del seu treball i la importància que tindrà el seu estudi per a altres investigadors i professionals del camp de l'educació plurilingüe.

GREIP member, Dr. Melinda Dooly was invited to give one of the keynotes on the first day of a 2 day online workshop, hosted by Support Services for the Education Gateway and e-Twinning. Her talk focused on exploring how teachers can use learning spaces to promote and enhance plurilingual and pluricultural learning and how these can be integrated into Virtual Exchange (VE). The talk also aimed to raise awareness of the 'monolingual bias' in these spaces. The talk was delivered to approximately 150 participants from all around the world.

La doctora Júlia Llompart va ser ponent convidada en una sessió del mòdul 'L'Educació Plurilingüe: Tendències i Perspectives de Recerca'. El mòdul forma part del Màster oficial en Recerca en Educació, impartit per Melinda Dooly i Dolors Masats. La Dra. Llompart va presentar una visió general del projecte CULT, del qual és l'investigadora principal, abans de guiar els estudiants en un taller empíric sobre com treball amb dades en brut i com fer un primer disseny d'enfocament de recerca adequats a les dades.

Dr. Osman Solmaz, co-editor of Linguistic Landscapes In English Language Teaching. A Pedagogical Guidebook, was our speaker for the fourth day. His engaging and at times humourous talk stimulated much participation and inspired new thoughts on how to extend LL beyond awareness to more active and interactive resources. Just one more day for the wrap up and our OTW will be finished.

Online working groups coming together to create fun LL games and an impressive presentation by our wonderful colleague, Dr. Gabriel Prego of the Universidad de Santiago at Compostela. The pace of activities is full on for the LoCALL Online Training Week.