Osnovna škola Bilje

Dear LUCIDE network,

 

returning to the office after a fruitful and inspiring workshop in Osijek (once again thanks KLARA AND THE OSIJEK TEAM) for making it such a good experience – we would like to share some “rather technical” points with you which we learned from the Osijek workshop and which help to improve the remaining three workshops but also other LUCIDE conferences.

 

To start with a little impression of the agenda

Dina Mehmedbegović (Institute of Education, London and a former student of Osijek university!) shared her research results of her study on Parenthood in bilingual/multilingual contexts in England and Wales. Marijana Kresić (Head of department of linguistic of the University of Zadar and raised in a Croatian family in Germany) gave an overview of the possibilities of bilingual education in Germany and Croatia (“learning Croatian in Germany and German in Croatia”) and of the impact of multilingualism on identity construction. Furthermore, Sarah McMonagle presented the case of Language in a Divided Society from the perspective of Northern Ireland – here similarities can be derived for Croatia, especially for the Osijek region.

 

We continued with a presentation on the the Roma Bayashi – Language and Culture, given by Duško Kostić who is the founder and president of the "Association of Roma Friendship", Luna and who received the Student Peace Prize for 2011 for his efforts to improve the situation of the Roma. Afterwards we learned about the various measures of Osijek’s library to encourage foreign language learning.

 

In the afternoon the cities present (Athens, Limassol, London, Osijek and Hamburg) reported about their issues and challenges and good practice examples of multilingualism in the private sphere and finally we had in interactive discussion forum with the workshop participants (university students, researchers, professors, teachers, library employees) on what concrete measures can be done to improve multilingualism in the various spheres.

In the evening we had an on-site-visit to a school in the region which received us very well and showed us how the C-Model works in practice.

 

Please find the agenda attached. The workshop presentations will be sent to you by Klara later on.

 

Please find now the suggestions for the remaining workshops

 

- Integrate more opportunities for discussion with the participants into the program. For example, as done in Osijek and received very well, an extra session where small groups of around 4-6 participants each meet at a table, chaired by a moderator and discuss an aspect of the workshop’s topic for 5 Minutes, a moderator then claps his/her hands and the groups rotate tables until each group has been at each table. In the end each moderator presents the results to the plenum

- Try to invite and involve stakeholders from the local municipality and discuss with them why certain language policies are not possible/ what needs to be done

- Concerning the city’s presentations:

There might be a maximum of 5 slides per city. Cities should limit their presentation to the topic of the workshop (E.g. Private. Otherwise we’ll hear things over and over again). Examples of challenges and best practices must concern language (and not just migrants/cultural groups). Keep referring to the relevant city - the uniqueness of this project is that it focusses on the urban level

 

Cities should send their presentation BEFOREHAND to the chair of this session in order to review for relevance of slides

 

With multilingual regards

Antje

**************************************

Antje Hansen

Forschungsreferentin der Fakultät für Erziehungswissenschaft, Psychologie und Bewegungswissenschaft

Universität Hamburg

Von-Melle-Park 8

D-20146 Hamburg

Tel.:+49 40 42838 9184

Fax:+49 40 42838 4298

antje.hansen@uni-hamburg.de

http://www.epb.uni-hamburg.de/de/Forschungsreferat