Children’s language learning pathways are becoming increasingly complex and diverse. On the 16th and 17th of March 2022, 32 participants from over 22 different educational contexts joined the PALINGUI online network meeting to discuss how language learning pathways can be made visible, especially through observation, documentation, and assessment / evaluation.

The meeting involved a wide range of contributions, both from the team and from participants. This created opportunities to exchange ideas, share practical experiences and examples and research projects, and also to highlight and discuss appropriate pedagogical approaches with a focus on observing, assessing and documenting young children's learning pathways in multilingual contexts.

The rich discussions and contributions resulted in a treasure trove of materials and ideas, and the PALINGUI team will be using these to work on the next stage of the project. The preliminarily findings from the network meeting show that the role of the educators in supporting children recognising language learning pathways is a crucial one, and that there needs to be an awareness of the different ways in which language learning takes place, and the importance of valuing all language learning, regardless of the (perceived) status of the language. Respecting the entire language repertoire of each child is a major concern.

The PALINGUI team is very much looking forward to continuing the discussions around making language learning pathways visible, both with the participants from the network meeting and  with others who may  be interested.

If you wish to learn more about this project and the outcomes of the network meeting, please contact the project coordinator Inge Birnie (Ingeborg.Birnie@strath.ac.uk) or through our Twitter feed @PALINGUI. You can also continue to check on how the project is developing through our webpage https://www.ecml.at/palingui.

Author : Ingeborg Birnie