Page 12 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

LINGUISTICALLY DIVERSE EDUCATIONAL CONTEXTS
form the basis of curricula in compulsory education (Kotarba-Kańczugowska, 2015, p. 45). Among other things, its aim is to minimise exclusion in society. Plurilingualism is understood as a common meaning system for the mother tongue, a foreign language, a minority language, and a regional language. Nowadays, focusing only on linguistic skills (the perspective of educational linguistics) is losing priority in favour of promoting education in linguistically diverse educational contexts, since the recipients of multilingual education are all students. I believe that research and reflection on plurilingualism should be undertaken by teachers of linguistic and non-linguistic subjects and researchers from different disciplines, thus creating room for greater understanding and new perspectives. We should collaborate with people from different backgrounds and with different experiences, because if we only interact with representatives of the same disciplines, always looking at the problem from the same perspective, we get stuck with the same or similar solutions.
Pluriliteracies, as described in Chapter 2, is an approach which may help the need to modify modern language education (I am thinking here of both mother tongue, second and foreign languages3) as it is based on a changed understanding of language and its role in learning, especially where language is seen as a means of knowing the world and learning as a process of meaning making. The aim of education should be to move away from superficial learning (elements of language) towards deep learning, which occurs when a learner is able to take what they have learned in one situation and apply it to a new one (National Research Council, 2012). Pluriliteracy occurs when learners engage in subject- specific ways of constructing knowledge and express their understanding through appropriate language (Meyer& Coyle, 2017, p. 199), as language use is the primary evidence that learning processes is occurring (Mohan, 2010). This process can be referred to as developing deep transferable knowledge (Pellegrino& Hilton, 2012). In this approach, the focus is on helping learners master subject content and preparing them so they can communicate knowledge effectively and appropriately across disciplines, cultures, and languages, in multiple ways (using a variety of literary genres and cross- curricular forms of communication), so that they become creative, responsible global citizens (Meyer & Coyle, 2017, p. 204). The last sentence clearly indicates the possibility of using pluriliteracy both in subject lessons taught in the official language of a given country and in second or foreign language lessons (including bilingual education). Pluriliteracy is a process which can contribute to the development of plurilingual and intercultural education both at school and at university.
I am of the opinion that a platform where researchers and teachers dealing with language education in first, second (e.g., Polish as a foreign language), and foreign languages could meet, without labels that define what is prestigious and what is inferior, could be a basis for cooperation and development of plurilingual and intercultural education. This platform would grow out of the different traditions of education (including language education) and would allow for the construction and reconstruction of thinking, the development of new meanings, understandings, and pedagogical action appropriate for today's times and society's needs, and which would contribute to social change. The professionalisation of education requires a teacher who is prepared to meet emerging challenges. Such challenges also include languages entering the educational space. In my opinion, a field of action and research could be the language pedagogy described in Chapter 3, which promotes plurilingualism, interculturalism, and pluriliteracies as an approach to language education, critical pedagogical
3 A second language is any language spoken by a person in a given country other than their mother tongue. For migrants coming to Poland, Polish is the second language.
A modern foreign language is a foreign language learnt, e.g., at school.
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