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Specialist in languages across the curriculum (LAC)
Dr. Eowyn Crisfield is a specialist in languages across the curriculum (LAC), including EAL/ELL, home languages, bilingual and immersion education, super-diverse schools and translanguaging. Her focus is on equal access to learning and language development for all students, and on appropriate and effective professional development for teachers working with language learners. She works with families, schools, and organisations around the world, and is engaged in research on language learning in multiple contexts. She is author of two books and many chapters and articles for both academic and teacher publications, and is a regular contributor to both academic and professional conferences.
You Can’t Decolonise the Curriculum in English: Multilingualism as a leverage for better learning in international schools
If the only word for the elephant in the room is in English, do we really clearly see the elephant? As international schools interrogate their practices around diversity, equity, and inclusion, we are often missing the most important element. A curriculum that is conceived of, resourced, and delivered only through English cannot be decolonised; it is by its very nature imbued with English-oriented ideas, morals, perspectives, mindset. In this session we will explore how the multilingual profiles of our students are key to unlocking other ways of knowing and understanding how the world works, and to truly developing international mindedness across our schools. Participants are encouraged to bring a laptop/tablet to this session as we will be doing some hands-on exploring of the world of internet/AI through a linguistic diversity lens.
Evidencing multilingualism – problems and (partial) solutions
One of the biggest challenges in international education is assessment. The vast majority of the tools we have available to assess our students, whether these are diagnostic, summative or other, have been developed and validated on monolingual, (usually) Western populations. These types of assessment often present only a partial picture of our bi/multilingual learners, and can have a negative impact on their well-being as well. In this talk, we will look at the different types of assessment we use in schools, and how the reliability and effectiveness of these are impacted by the linguistic profiles of our students. When using these tools, we need to know how to mediate and moderate our data for bi/multilingual learners, in order to ensure that they are represented fairly. We will then look at innovative approaches to assessment which provide equity for our bi/multilingual students, to make certain that we are assessing knowledge and skills in ways that differentiate between content and language. These types of assessment help us find out what we need to know about a student’s learning, and allow us to plan effectively, using our data, for both content and language learning trajectories.
Well-being through linguistic inclusion: Creating community within and across languages
Boarding schools have a unique challenge in that the home languages of students can be both a beneficial support for well-being and inclusion, and a means of creating language 'cliques' which can hinder inclusion and engagement. How can we ensure that we allow and encourage students to continue using their own languages both socially and academically, but still develop a ‘whole-school’ atmosphere? In this talk we will look at specific initiatives that leverage linguistic diversity to build communities of speakers and communities of aspiring multilinguals in collaboration with each other. While this session is designed with boarding schools in mind, the content is also relevant to day schools.
Developing bilingual programmes: research to practice
Developing a bilingual programme is a longitudinal journey that commences with a mission and vision, and does not have a fixed end point. It involves many stakeholders (parents, leadership, teachers, students) who may change in profile or focus over time, which can impact the on-going success of the programme. It also involves many push and pull factors, such as language status, resourcing, testing, etc. that will impact the process and product. This seminar provides an overview of the research on bilingual education models, and a framework to apply to the development of new programmes, or to review and improve current bilingual/dual-language programmes.
Beyond a 'programme': Extending EAL as a whole-school practice
Language learning and content learning cannot be separated out in any meaningful way. All content has language as an integral part of the learning, whether it is necessary to develop new vocabulary for understanding a topic, or new structures in order to talk or write about a topic. When we say ‘Every teacher is a language teacher’ we are expecting every teacher to have the knowledge to identify and plan for appropriate language development in their class/subject areas. Few teachers have been given the opportunity to learn how language works in the curriculum, and to actively plan for the improvement of English across all subject areas. This seminar introduces a framework for a language-integrated curriculum model, which allows schools to meet the needs of all their language learner students, as well as students with other specific learning needs related to language and processing.