What was the project about?
This project will explore new ways to enhance young migrants' education by developing links between schools, the home and local partners in education. This educational joint venture aims to develop the learners’ skills in the language of schooling and their plurilingual competences. New ways of teaching will be explored by producing multi-modal texts. Online resources as well as accompanying documents will be developed in cooperation with libraries and other local partners.
Abstract
The Collaborative Community Approach to Migrant Education Project perceives the majority language classroom in a wider context and aims to develop innovative language pedagogies that draw on links between school, home and the community to develop learners’ plurilingualism. The project will investigate how topic-based learning in different languages can improve majority language learning and how a plurilingual approach can involve families, community groups and Arts institutions. The project will look at how to approach a range of texts, including multimodal texts, with students from diverse backgrounds. The aim is to build on existing initiatives in the 4 countries by developing different aspects of the project within each member state: creating learning communities by involving parents in ‘dynamic interactive groups’ within mainstream schools (Spain); setting up networks to develop stronger links between complementary schools (which provide community-run after-school mother tongue classes) and mainstream schools (Greece); working with local libraries and museums to support migrant education in the majority language (UK); and developing an online module and resources for teacher training to support learners from migrant backgrounds (France). Findings will be shared between team members to develop a more comprehensive approach to migrant education.