Page 77 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

area. Thanks to this approach, these countries can take pride in redesigning their education curricula and teacher education activities, which directly contributes to changes in education.
I have the impression that not much is currently changing in Poland with regard to curricula for both language and non-language education. Teachers follow curricula mainly through textbooks supplied by publishers. The classroom system is in force, characterised, among other things, by the teacher's managerial function, frontal teaching, a focus on "covering the required learning material", the homogeneity of the learning content for each learner to be taught by the teacher using subject didactics and teaching methods130. This has a direct impact on university education, as it can be difficult to actively involve people trained to be passive in primary and secondary schools in the process of autonomous, authentic learning, or planning their development paths.
The reflection that comes to mind is that we have not yet been able to build a different system of education in Poland that would be tailored, as it were, to the times and the people involved. Every educational context is different. Each individual brings to this context his or her previous experiences, knowledge, beliefs, and values, which play an important role both in planning the educational process and in learning, as well as understanding the reality in which language is a medium of communication and construction of meanings in the world around us. Education changes positively when the lived experiences of learners are taken into account, when all are welcomed and accepted by the learning community131. During my research journey looking at the many education systems in the world, theoretical concepts, and educational practices, in recent years I have decided to answer questions such as: What can I bring to the process of language education? How can I translate my experiences, knowledge from the literature and research, beliefs, and values into the construction of a piece of educational reality that frees us, as teachers and learners, from habitual thinking about language education and become a platform for the kind of mental and communicative activity that fosters self- discovery and authentic interaction with others?132
Education has a direct impact on those who participate in it, hence my starting point is social justice as a fundamental element in educational programmes and in building a culture of learning. Educational activities that could foster learning environments and social activities, in my opinion, should be participatory, inclusive133, and plurilingual134. Developing social and linguistic competences makes us enrich our sense of respect, tolerance, and sensitivity to race, gender, disability, environmental, and social issues (Bulut & Arikan, 2015, p. 19). This requires a shift from passive to active learning, in which learning would involve the meaningful organisation of experiences so that learning can be more easily transferred and applied to other situations (Taba, 1962). It also requires the activation of all communication channels135 in order to obtain a personal understanding of the acquired knowledge (Golębniak, 2019), moving from knowledge to action136. Crucial in this process seems to be the development of learners' self-awareness of how to learn relating to learners' values, beliefs, and
130 Gołębniak, 2019, p. 861; Śliwerski & Paluch, 2021.
131 Joldersma & Deakin-Crick, 2012, p. 175.
132 Żuk (2016, p. 92) argues that "the essence of mental human activity is to know one's own inner self, one's own experiences and reflections, to define a personal attitude towards people, places or events".
133 Emphasising learner diversity.
134 After all, every teacher is a teacher of language.
135 Also in other languages.
136 According to the theory of reconstructionism (critical pedagogy).
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