Page 37 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

In a changing world, the reality we live in is increasingly multilingual and multicultural. If the aim of intercultural education is to develop plurilingual decision-making and social action skills, then languages should become a tool for communication, for conveying meaning in the educational space, which can be achieved by using Pluriliteracies Teaching for Deeper Learning (PTDL) (see Coyle& Meyer, 2021), which 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-making29. The multi-language literacy described in Chapter 2 can contribute to developing plurilingualism, translingualism, and intercultural competence among learners through multimodal and plurilingual practices used to build learning programmes across content areas and in different spaces and places, treating the world around us as a socially constructed text. Such a perspective could contribute to the development of practical and critical wisdom, as well as to being reflective. It would respond to the challenges to language teaching and learning processes that arise from cultural and linguistic diversity in today's world. In translingualism, the focus shifts from belonging to diversity, from grammar to practice, and from knowing to enacting (Blackledge & Creese, 2017, p. 32). Our aim, therefore, could be to use a variety of texts and students' skills to process content at an increasingly high level and communicate their understanding through increasingly complex media (including texts) and literary genres and to develop (critical) pluriliteracies, emphasising the role of languages, by developing critical reading of texts, discovering the (hidden) role of language, communicating one's understanding in different ways, including in different languages, and applying one's understanding in new situations and building on critical reflection, thus developing empathy towards cultural diversity and openness to enrich one's culture.
29 See Chapter 2.
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