On May 30th, Dr Margaret Hawkins (U. of Wisconsin Madison) hosted a session of GREIP Dialogic Spaces, with the title: ‘Pluringual Learners and Schooling: What Can a Sociocultural Approach Offer?’
In this era of mobility, there are students world-wide being schooled in a language and often a culture that differs from that of their home. As neoliberal approaches to schooling proliferate, language and learning are reduced to the acquisition and assessment of skills and culturally privileged forms of knowledge, and emergent plurilinguals become essentialized as those who lack the skills and ability to learn appropriately in the target language. In this session we will consider how, and in what ways, a sociocultural approach to language and learning in schools might foster culturally and linguistically responsive spaces, curricula and pedagogy, and shape educational institutions and practices that are responsive to the students, families and communities they serve.