Events

How do we give voice to multilingualism in schools and pedagogies? Whose voices are we hearing in education and language teaching? Do we know, see, and understand how minorities and multilingualism are part of our classroom interaction? Who has the right to speak a language, or which languages can be spoken in school? Is there room for “broken” languages in schools?  

 The focus of the seminar is to examine and discuss language learning and practices from the point of view of present language learning paradigms, linguistic resilience, and learner autonomy. The underlying assumption is that a democracy values and thrives from multilingualism, but how these principals manifest in schools and in language education is a topic that needs to be addressed. 

 The seminar will include presentations, workshops, school visits and informal meetings. The seminar is held in Inari (Finland), which is in the northernmost corner of the European Union, in the middle of the Northern Polar Cap. In the municipality three different Sámi languages are officially used side by side with Finnish language: they are North Sámi, Inari Sámi, and Skolt Sámi languages. Almost one third of the Inari citizens are Sámi. The local educational solutions combined with the current language teaching practices are strongly present in the seminar.  In addition to introducing Finnish language education policies, the event will promote cooperation and exchange of educational practices among the participants.

 This seminar is co-produced by the Finnish Erasmus+ National Agency (The Finnish National Agency for Education), the Self-Government Body of the Sámi and Regional State Administrative Agency for Lapland. The Norwegian and Swedish Erasmus+ National agencies are committed to send participants in the seminar. 

The participants will gain understanding, new ideas, methods, skills, and motivation to support multilingualism in language learning and teaching. Furthermore, the participants can establish networks and have possibility to find cooperation partners for different opportunities offered by the Erasmus+ programme. 

The seminar is open for teachers, teacher trainers, researchers and administrators who are working with and interested in language issues and minority languages. We prefer participants from minority language areas, and if possible rural/remote/border areas.

We expect 40 participants as follows:

• 8 participants from Finland
• 4 participants from Sweden and Norway
• 24 participants from other EU countries