The 6th International Conference on Language and Education and the 13th Language and Development Conference: Inclusion, Mobility, and Multilingual Education: Exploring the Role of Languages for Development To be held from 24-26 September 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand is now open for registration.

This new event has presented a fantastic opportunity for policymakers, researchers, academics, practitioners, development personnel, teachers and linguists within your networks to come together to share views and explore issues concerning language use in development contexts.

The Inclusion, Mobility, and Multilingual Education Conference will:

 

  • explore how an open and inclusive multilingual approach, especially in the context of education and wider society, can maximise outcomes and well-being for different groups and for an increasingly mobile population;
  • create links between policy, practice and research on how multilingual approaches can be used to advance (civic) participation, access, and learning for children and adults from marginalised and mobile communities;
  • investigate the role of, and balance between, different languages – local, national, and international – in the context of diverse and mobile populations, and social and educational practice;
  • identify policy priorities for advancing multilingual approaches to social and educational policy-making, learning and development;
  • raise awareness among participants in these key thematic areas.

 

Our plenary speakers are:

  • Hywel Coleman, University of Leeds
    Member of the British Association of Applied Linguistics, Southern Multilingualism and Diversities Consortium and Teachers of English as a Foreign Language in Indonesia (TEFLIN) author of numerous publications on language for development
  • Psyche Kennett, Language and Development Conference Trustee and Consultant  Currently working with the Communicative Tamil for Special Purposes Language Programme, previous work includes leading classroom practice for displaced populations, humanitarian-development and school related gender-based violence
  • Professor Francois Grin, University of Geneva
    Head of Economy, Languages and Training, leader of the Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe group, author of over 200 articles, chapters, reports
  • Professor Isabel Pefianco, Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines
    Chair of the Department of English at Ateneo de Manila University known for her work situating English within a multilingual setting, with countless pieces published in internationally recognised publications

 

Conference Themes

The conference will focus on 3 themes all of which are central to ensuring that access to education is equitable and high quality.

 

Language and inclusion

Explore issues of language learning but also access to civic participation, justice, health and information for those from minority ethnic and language backgrounds and with different abilities and also exploring issues of gender understanding.

 

Language and mobility

Discuss the role of language for refugees and displaced populations in economic migration and urbanisation and in higher education and employability

 

Multilingual Education

Deliberate different aspects of multilingual education, including policies, policy implementation, pedagogies, teacher effectiveness, curriculum/materials development and learning assessment