The ECML-funded Pluriwell project hosted its inaugural network meeting on October 1 and 2. A total of 22 participants from 10 countries attended the event at ECML headquarters in Graz. The gathering was an opportunity to share and showcase the ideas that the Pluriwell project team has been developing over the past year, but, to an even greater extent, it was a chance to put these ideas into practice with the help of a diverse group of committed teachers and other collaborators.

Because the project is aimed at fostering the plurilingual wellbeing of teachers around Europe, Pluriwell’s approach is necessarily rooted in the everyday experiences of teachers. To gain a broad perspective on teachers’ views of plurilingualism, the project invited active teachers from around Europe. Primary and secondary school teachers were joined by teacher training experts. They all offered insights into teachers’ views of plurlingual education and the kinds of concerns educators experience, some that reflected the specificities of their regional and national contexts and others that were more widely shared.

While it was important for the project leaders to share some of the theoretical foundations of plurilingual wellbeing, equally critical was creating a space where this wellbeing could emerge in the context of the meeting itself. The event was plurilingual in practice, as it was held in several different languages, and the organisers sought to ensure that everyone felt linguistically at ease, regardless of their proficiency in English, French or the other languages present. For many of the participants, it was energising and refreshing to be in friendly and professional international environment with so many other teachers. “It was a rare opportunity to be a part of a group of active teachers from all over, where everyone was equally dedicated, from the project team to all the participants,” said Sanja Bogojević, an Italian language teacher from Montenegro who attended the meeting. Indeed, one of the most unusual elements of the project is that it brings together working teachers, many of whom are not often involved in such international forums.

“This was a network meeting in the truest sense of the word,” said project coordinator Caterina Sugranyes. “We are thrilled to have left Graz having made strong connections and really having formed a team of teachers and professionals who are committed to helping others overcome some of the challenges they face in plurilingual education.” Indeed, the teachers who attended the meeting will be deeply involved in the project moving forward, as they will be continuing the transformative work of creating tools for plurilingual wellbeing with colleagues in their respective countries.

Caterina SUGRANYES, Latisha MARY, Gerit JARITZ, Karen AARØE

The ECML-funded project PLURIWELL is moving forward into a new, farther-reaching phase, as the project leaders and other participants prepare for the first network meeting, which will be hosted by the ECML in Graz from 30 September  to 2 October. The meeting will mark the formal launch of the project’s efforts this year to share and explore the concept of plurilingual wellbeing. The coming academic year will culminate in the creation of a collection of plurilingual-wellbeing-oriented tools.

Together with the ECML, the project members Caterina Sugranyes, Latisha Mary, Gerit Jaritz and Karen Aarøe have been contacting education professionals from around Europe and recruiting participants from a range of different countries and linguistic contexts. The response from teachers and others around the continent has been overwhelmingly positive, as evidenced by the involvement of people from nine different countries. Specifically, attendees of the network meeting will hail from as far afield as Ireland, Lithuania, Spain, Switzerland, Denmark, France, Hungary, Norway and the Netherlands. “PLURIWELL is largely about how we recognize and then respond to the plurilingual conditions that surround us”, according to the project coordinator, Caterina Sugranyes, “That is why it is essential to have people from so many different places with differing circumstances and realities.”

The invitees to the network meeting were carefully selected with the overall goals of the project in mind. Most of the participants are primary school teachers but they will be joined by several university-based teacher trainers, along with the project’s associate partners, Camilla F. Hansen, Kaitlin Balthasar, Elisabeth I. Kaalund, Josep Ballarin Garoña and Will Bromberg. Their varying perspectives on plurilingualism and language education will undoubtedly be of value as PLURIWELL seeks a better understanding of how teachers can become more aware of their own plurilingual wellbeing and how, in turn, they can help foster this wellbeing in others.

The network meeting, though, is only a starting point for the coming year of activity for PLURIWELL. The participants will have the chance to remain actively involved throughout the year, following the pathway for designing plurilingual-wellbeing-oriented tools that will emerge from the meeting. Thanks to the knowledge and experience they will have gained, they will be able to return to their home countries and schools to create tools that will allow them to continue to develop their own plurilingual wellbeing and that of their colleagues. Throughout the year, they will also be able to attend online meetings where they will share what they have done and give and receive feedback from the PLURIWELL partners and their other colleagues. The project partners will then compile these tools into a handbook targeting teachers all over Europe as they deal with the issues that emerge in the context of plurilingual education.

This builds on the work already conducted by the PLURIWELL team on plurilingual wellbeing, including the creation of glossary of definitions of some of the key concepts that the project addresses, as well as the drafting of a series of guiding principles for plurilingual wellbeing.

Caterina Sugranyes, Latisha Mary, Gerit Jaritz, Karen Aarøe

• ECML project website "Pluriwell – Fostering the plurilingual wellbeing of language teachers" (available in English and French) : www.ecml.at/pluriwell

The ECML project PLURIWELL is up and running. The team has begun its work to boost the plurilingual wellbeing of teachers around Europe. The main project partners, Gerit Jaritz, Kaaren Aaröe, Latisha Mary and Caterina Sugranyes, formally launched the project in Graz at a meeting early this year. The project leaders are currently recruiting additional experts, including both practicing teachers and teacher trainers, to take part in this initiative to enhance educators’ plurilingual wellbeing, defined here as teachers’ awareness, understanding and ease with their “own” languages and with how these languages allow them to relate to their environment. “The question is, what is my relationship with my languages, and what does that mean for me as a teacher?” the project coordinator Sugranyes said.

The selected participants will be invited to a networking event in October at the ECML offices in Austria to help build the framework for plurilingual wellbeing by creating materials and guidelines. In fact, the very core of the project will be these contributions from professionals from different geographic and linguistic contexts. Only with this range of perspectives will it be possible to gain a fuller picture of the complexities of plurilingual identity and wellbeing on a continent where so many languages coexist and sometimes clash, both in society at large and in educational settings in particular.

Teachers may be highly aware of these issues and fully committed to plurilingualism, but they are not immune from complications. It is true that, in the last several years, teachers, researchers and policymakers around Europe and worldwide have all increasingly embraced a more plurilingual approach to language learning. Indeed, there is a growing consensus in the field as to the benefits of using multiple languages in class in different ways. While there is ample evidence of the effectiveness of this approach, it often happens that for the professionals involved, implementing plurilingual methods comes with certain contradictions and challenges. Plurilingual wellbeing is about identifying and seeking to overcome some of the thorny issues that can emerge in the context of plurilingual identity.

Of course, these concerns can vary greatly from one educational context to another. Indeed, the main project partners all come from places with different kinds of plurilingual realities. At the upcoming network meeting, there will be representatives from places with an even wider range of plurilingual conditions. The potential contradictions affecting the plurilingual identity of a teacher from France are likely to differ from those experienced by one in Estonia. PLURIWELL is recruiting teachers from a range of contexts to explore these potential differences, but also the commonalities among teachers from around Europe. The participants will then work with their colleagues in their home countries to adapt the materials they have helped create to the specifics of their own schools and societies.

www.ecml.at/pluriwell

Caterina Sugranyes (coordinator), Karen Aarøe, Gerit Jaritz, Latisha Mary