| CODE | EPE2025 | ||||||||
| TITLE | Responding to Multilingual Contexts | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 02 - Years 2, 3 in Modular Undergraduate Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 5 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 4 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Early Childhood and Primary Education | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit seeks to equip trainee teachers to face the challenges and opportunities they are expected to encounter in relation to the increasingly pluralistic nature of modern society and education. Multilingual contexts are explored in order to enhance the students’ understanding of and sensitivity towards their implications. This application form concerns the specific aspect of multilingualism, as reflected in the aims and outcomes below. Study-unit Aims: This component of the study-unit aims to: • Familiarise students with the notion and implications of multilingualism through an engagement with research and policy; • Illustrate approaches, strategies and practices that support teaching and learning within multilingual educational contexts (including teaching of Maltese as a Foreign Language); • Promote and foster positive attitudes towards multilingualism; • Raise awareness of the educator’s agentive role within language policy; • Support students’ identification and responsiveness to both the challenges and opportunities posed by multilingualism in education. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Identify key issues related to the current sociolinguistic context in Malta; - Explain key local sociolinguistic issues in terms of broader sociohistorical/political phenomena and events; - Identify and explain strategies that support language transmission and maintenance of majority and minority languages within the local educational context; - Identify and evaluate current approaches, practices and policies in terms of their responsiveness to multilingualism. 2. Skills By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Share and compare concerns and ideas related to teaching in a multilingual context; - Critically evaluate the attitudes and beliefs within their own and others’ language ideologies in light of their developing understandings about multilingualism; - Apply knowledge of the interconnectedness of language policy across social levels, domains and stakeholders, to the micro-level classroom context; - Develop a personalized language policy in order to respond appropriately to the needs and affordances within a specific sociolinguistic context. Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: Main texts: 1. Coelho, E. (2012). Language and learning in multilingual classrooms: A practical approach. Multilingual Matters. 2. Garcia, O., Lin, A., & May, S. (2017). Bilingual and multilingual education (Vol. 5, Encyclopedia of Language and Education). Springer International Publishing AG. 3. Richards, J. C. & Schmidt, R. (2013). Longman dictionary of language teaching & applied linguistics (4th Edition). Routledge. Supplementary reading: 1. Camenzuli, R., Lundberg, A., & Gauci, P. (2022). Collective teachers’ beliefs about multilingualism in Maltese primary education, International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. DOI: 10.1080/13670050.2022.2114787 2. Camilleri Grima, A. (2018). Globalization and education: What future for the Maltese-speaking child?. Éducation et Sociétés Plurilingues, 44, 31-43. 3. Caruana S. (2007). Language use and language attitudes in Malta. In A. Huguet & D. Lasagabaster (Eds.), Language use and attitudes towards multilingualism in bilingual European contexts (pp. 271-286). Multilingual Matters. https://www.um.edu.mt/library/oar/handle/123456789/53404. 4. Dressler, R. (2015). Exploring linguistic identity in young multilingual learners. TESL Canada Journal 32(1), 42 – 52. 5. Formosa, J. & Little, S. (2022). Prompting heritage-language engagement in English-speaking Maltese families, via a family language programme intervention. First Language. https://doi-org.ejournals.um.edu.mt/10.1177/01427237221116982 6. Grapin, S. (2022). What the "periphery" can teach the "core" in the education of multilingual learners. International Multilingual Research Journal, 16(3), 184-191. https://doi-org.ejournals.um.edu.mt/10.1080/19313152.2022.2068113 |
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| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture and Independent Study | ||||||||
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| LECTURER/S | Michelle Panzavecchia |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2024/5. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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