This project arises from two long-standing, global and well documented educational challenges: firstly Eastern European Traveller, including Roma pupils' poor participation and persistently low achievement in education, and secondly the decline of home language use in primary classrooms (age 5-11) as a pedagogic tool to raise the academic achievement of pupils whose home language(s) differs from the official language of schools. The project’s response to these challenges will begin in UK with the development of an innovative integration of two technologies working in tandem (digital table and large scale 360 degree projected displays) to act as a medium through which pupils can experience high quality dual language learning. Accompanying software will incorporate sound files in pupils’ home languages alongside English, and pupils will be encouraged to communicate in whichever language supports their activity, i.e. their home language or the language of the school or a mixture of both. The activities operating through this technology will be enquiries (problems or puzzles) coherent with schools’ curriculum subject knowledge requirements, and which will therefore demand purposeful language use. The objective is to improve the Eastern European pupils’ motivation and engagement towards institutionalised school activity, at the same time as improving their proficiency in using cognitive academic language for learning in both their home language and English. Collaboration with parents, and the transformation of teachers’ attitudes towards Traveller communities is an integral part of the project so that children’s cultural and linguistic backgrounds are made available to schools by parents who trust this information is respected, valorised and used by teachers to improve the educational and social inclusion of their children. At the same time families become more knowledgeable about institutionalised education. The results of developments in UK and the lessons learned will act as a springboard for work in phase two to promote a dual language pedagogic approach in France, Finland and Romania, appropriate to the needs of their children and context. The project is therefore iterative in its responsiveness to lessons learned from one context applied sensitively to another. To achieve this, partners from 4 European countries will work together. The coordinator of the project (at Newcastle University, UK) is an expert in the field of teacher education in equality and diversity who has close collaborative links with local schools including WestgateHill Primary School where over 90% of pupils speak English as an additional language, and where the dual language immersive space will be created by the technology for the benefit of local Eastern European Traveller pupils, including Roma in the first instance. The project also benefits from two other Newcastle University participants who provide expertise in enquiry-based learning, and in interaction design. The co-coordinator of the project (at Middlesex University, UK) is another expert in teacher education and collaboration with multilingual communities. The UK participants are joined by a professor of multiculturalism (at Helsinki University) an expert on funded European projects that focus on equality who coordinates a team of two other Helsinki University participants whose expertise includes the development and promotion of bilingual pedagogies in Finnish schools and video and linguistic analyses. A professor of education (at Institut Catholique de Paris) in France where a large number of Romanian migrants have settled in recent years is the French partner. The Finnish and French participants will identify collaborative school partners where similar technologies will be used during the project. Finally, the project has a Romanian partner who is president of the people-to-people foundation, who built and runs a thriving school for Roma children in Oradea, Romania. Through wide-scale dissemination of all outputs from the project, the long term aim is to effect practice changes in the inclusion and education of Eastern European Traveller including Roma pupils across Europe in order to positively impact on increased school attendance and improved educational achievement. We expect the project to lead to greater teacher understanding and responsiveness to cultural and linguistic diversity, with improved competency specifically in teaching pupils from Eastern European Traveller including Roma groups. For parents we aim for the project to contribute towards an improved understanding of the cultural values and practices of institutionalised education in the partner countries. Taken together, the intended impacts on pupils, their parents and schools, could have substantial longer term impacts on the inclusion of and more active participation of Eastern European Traveller communities in society in each partner country, contributing towards greater social cohesion.
This project arises from two long-standing, global educational challenges: firstly Eastern European Traveller, including Roma pupils' poor participation and persistently low achievement in education, and secondly the decline of home language use in primary classrooms (age 5-11) as a pedagogic tool to raise the academic achievement of pupils whose home language(s) differs from the official language of schools. The project’s response to these challenges began in the UK with the development of an innovative integration of two technologies working in tandem (digital table and large scale 360 degree projected displays) to act as a medium through which pupils experienced high quality learning through translanguaging. Accompanying software incorporated sound files for characters speaking in pupils’ home languages alongside English, and pupils were encouraged to communicate in whichever language supported their activity, i.e. to translanguage together for learning. The activities operating through this technology were enquiries (problems or puzzles) consistent with schools’ curriculum subject knowledge requirements, and which therefore demanded purposeful language use. Parents’ expert knowledge of their children’s translanguaging practices was acknowledged as they undertook all of the translation work. The objective was to improve Eastern European parents’ understanding of and pupils’ motivation and engagement towards institutionalised school activity, at the same time as improving pupils’ proficiency in using cognitive academic language for learning in translanguaging. The transformation of teachers’ attitudes towards Gypsy Roma communities was an integral part of the project so that children’s cultural and linguistic backgrounds are made available to schools by parents who trust this information is respected, valorised and used by teachers to improve the educational and social inclusion of their children. The results from the UK acted as a springboard for work in phase two to promote a translanguaging pedagogy in France, Finland and Romania. In France, the children from 2 schools in Sète, near Montpellier in the south of France, worked with their parents and teachers in school to reflect on art work in the local museum (task-problems). Pupils and parents working together, with the aid of tablets, wrote placards about the paintings in the Museum, where the placards now stand next to the art work. The placards are written in a translanguaged form of Romanian and Ursari. In Finland work centred on development teacher expertise drawing on the evidence from the UK and France. Work in Romania focussed on teacher training to introduce children’s Romani language into everyday lessons more effectively. Teachers have begun to use a standardised form of Roma being developed in Romania in their classrooms to support pupils in writing in both Romanian and Romani. Over 20 video excerpts from the project with subtitles into English, from the UK and France have already been added to the project website for use in training in Translanguaging pedagogy and collaboration between school and parents. These videos have been categorized into 5 groups of material: Translanguaging for Learning Translanguaging for participation Natural translanguaging and awareness of language choice Tanslanguaging and affect Additional videos The additional videos include videos of parents involved in the project presenting at conferences, telling us about their life and supplemental material from other project complementary to the ROMtels project. They are available on the website at: http://research.ncl.ac.uk/romtels/resources/video/. Work with parents and grandparents has been a particularly successful part of this project, and it has led to a process of engagement we have termed a ‘Languages for Dignity approach’. This together with work with pupils has led to increased school attendance as well as improved attainment trends. Evidence from videos taken in the UK and France alongside other forms of evidence from and materials produced for the project as a whole has been drawn together in the ROMtels website (http://research.ncl.ac.uk/romtels/) and in the production of several guidance documents for teachers. All technology resources produced for the project are also available to download and configure as appropriate to age, language and curriculum content. Dissemination to teachers, teacher educators, specialist teachers and education organisation at several conferences (the resources and feedback from which are also available from the ROMtels website) has shown how a translanguaging pedagogy could be effectively appropriated and employed by teachers to benefit plurilingual pupils' learning, including those of Roma heritage.