MULTILINGUALISM: PHILOSOPHY, POLICY AND PRACTICE

This workshop allows participants to explore how language, in general, is inextricably linked with each learner's identity and sense of self, and how multilingualism shapes the learner's experience of the world. Participants are invited to investigate how school communities live in and grow through a plurality of languages that shape everyday interactions; and how this constitutes the shared and deeply personal texture of all learning experiences. This awareness guides participants in exploring the role of multilingualism in teaching and learning, how language policies taking multilingualism into account can foster intercultural awareness, understanding and respect; and how this perspective can help school communities grow as IB learning communities.

Participants will explore how:

• Language learning and development supports multilingualism as a fact, right and resource for learning.
• A school's culture and environment impacts language development, learning and multilingualism.
• Multilingualism and language development are central to the aims of an IB education.
• The language tenets inform and impact language policies and pedagogical approaches across the school..

Practical applications: This workshop investigates the central role of language and multilingualism in IB schools, and how this informs all aspects of the life of the school community: school leaders and programme coordinators will cultivate a vision of the role of multilingualism in an IB learning community and how this informs the development of a language policy; teachers will gain tools to use multilingualism as a resource to foster learning when developing and implementing the IB curriculum; media specialists and librarians will explore the resources that can support multilingual teaching and learning in an IB school.