Local organiser: Lekh Baral, Kaja Haugen, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences

ECML experts: Katja Schnitzer, Germany; Catherine Carré-Karlinger, Austria

Participants: 18 (foreign language teachers, teachers of other subjects, teacher educators, teachers of the language of schooling)

“The Supporting Multilingual Classrooms workshop was held in Bergen, Norway on 23 and 24 September 2021. The workshop was organised at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences through the research group Analysing and Assessing Linguistic Multicompetence. The online workshop welcomed teacher educators, pre-service and in-service teachers from across Norway. ECML coordinators Katja Schnitzer and Catherine Carré-Karlinger led the participants through working with attitudes toward plurilingualism, teaching in a multilingual environment, languages as a bridge for successful education, and how to build a whole school approach.

The workshop was held in the light of the Norwegian curriculum reform in 2020, where multilingualism is explicitly valued as a resource. A number of ECML projects (e.g. Maledive, Illey, FREPA/CARAP, Marille, PlurCur) were presented and discussed in light of the Norwegian context (see e.g. Bjarnø, Nergård & Aarsæther, 2017; Krulatz, Dahl & Flognfeldt, 2018).

It was particularly impressive to see the level of engagement among the participants in working with tasks/activities following multilingual approach. This is an indicator of how adopting a multilingual approach can enhance engagement among the learners.”

Lekh Baral, Kaja Haugen, local organisers, 1 October 2021

ECML project website: Supporting multilingual classrooms – EU-ECML cooperation agreement 2020-2021 "Innovative methodologies and assessment in language learning"