The conference focuses on language education policy and the crisis of refugee or migrant children in the schools of the heightened security environment of Western nations. The focus is on cultures and ways of life that often are misrepresented, and also on languages and repositories of knowledge as affected by the expected linguistic assimilation through schooling. Linguistic diversity and humanity’s knowledge base are also affected. This process produces difficulties tied to identities, which displaced children and youth must negotiate. With the main focus on the role of teachers, teacher education vs. media representation and fear factors like Islamophobia, the Conference addresses the reality for the very young up to university students who are faced with often hostile conditions. By bringing together scholars of relevant areas to discuss these issues in an open, productive, and calm manner, we hope to explore methodological as well as conceptual issues, review the extensive work that has already documented post-9/11 experiences and ways out of the conundrum, create materials and databases for teachers, and expand the field for researchers of all ages and many related specialties.

Overview

This bi-continental conference will address:

• Teacher training on issues of identity, language and culture to meet the specific needs of the new migrant populations served; 

• School adaptation to the linguistic, cultural and social situation emerging from mass migration; 

• The urgent need for new policy solutions; 

• Repositories of knowledge in immigrants’ languages and way of life, and the trauma migrant and refugee children have been through and still face, in order to create approaches that deal equitably with their losses and rights. 


Issues that will be debated:

A. Documentation (Policy) Issues

• Language education policies in place. 

• Teacher preparation to welcome migrant and 
refugee children. 

• LEP linking linguistic, cultural, and social integration with identity processes. 

• B. Teacher-focused Issues related to these students 

• Multilingual education experiences of families— the home languages and schooling experiences in the new country, types of literacy by culture, intergenerational language shifts; Nation-state1 and nation-state 2 connections (ie ties to the home country, heritage language classes, community events); 

• Language challenges and the clash between home values and the dominant society’s values; school and social contexts as beneficial or hostile; 

• Potential for teachers to intervene positively on migrant children’s identity formation both linguistically and culturally valuing the home culture. 

• C. Pedagogy-focused Issues 

• Teacher-initiated strategies; 

• Prospects for change: input from teachers on what is needed in terms of resources, training, and so on; 

• How policy can respond to the actual pedagogical demands as well as students’ linguistic/cultural realities. 

• D. Institutional issues 

• How schools are organized to support new kinds of students; 

• Assumptions about graded learning that force teachers to classify and assess students in particular ways; 

• Boundaries between schools and local communities that impede organizational learning to support plurilingual schools