Fifth EDiLiC congress Rennes (France), July 9-11, 2014
Education, linguistic and cultural diversity, minority languages
During this 5th international congress, EDiLiC notably addressed the theme of Purial Approaches as a possible practice for managing certain sociolinguistic and educational issues in teaching, such as taking minority languages into account.
Description of the theme of the congress
The organization in Brittany of the 5th EDiLiC congress provided the opportunity to cross the issue of awakening to languages with a more targeted questioning around the languages that we call minorized here in order to insist from the outset on a qualitative process. We thus dealt with educational purposes, didactic approaches, renewed plurilingual and plural perspectives, activist and institutional strategies for teaching and awakening languages in general and more specifically concerning minority languages, linguistic and cultural discrimination. , innovative teacher training strategies and new didactic tools and practices generated by this perspective, etc.
Faithful to its objective of associating scientific research and reflective testimonies of the direct actors of training, production of knowledge and production of tools, the congress welcomed as much university research, in particular research-actions, as reports of experiences. ground.
In connection with this complex questioning, the proposals were articulated around 3 main axes:
Axis 1 - sociolinguistic issues, language policies and reduction situations
The concept of a minority language : definition ; terminology ; glottopolitical issues.
What purposes for linguistic policies of diversification? What education in linguistic and cultural diversity and what linguistic and cultural diversity in education ?
What languages to teach at the School ? Which linguistic and cultural varieties / variations to integrate according to the contexts ?
What place in educational programs for minority linguistic and cultural varieties ? Should priority be given to language education policies of " positive discrimination "Or" protected promotion " ?
How can the School take into account the ethical, political, social, but also educational and didactic issues of the relationships of hegemonies, domination, inequalities, exclusions, alterophobias which characterize situations of minorization? ?
Which strategies for standards between, for example, normativization (Catalan model) or polynomial (Corsican model) ?
Axis 2 - didactic perspective and educational practices: pluralistic approaches, awakening to languages and minority languages
How the " pluralistic approaches "(And in particular the awakening to languages) can they integrate the problematic of the " minorization " ? In what forms and modalities to include minority languages and cultures ? Which linguistic and cultural varieties, which project, which intervention systems, which strategies, which didactic supports, to implement to promote the awakening to languages and in particular the awareness of the phenomena of exclusion and hierarchy of languages and cultures ?
What synergies and complementarities can be put in place between the awakening of languages, the teaching of particular languages of any status (foreign languages, regional languages, languages of origin, etc.) and other learning (language or not) at the School? ? What place for minority languages in the different teaching language and in the teaching of so-called " non-linguistic " ?
Axis 3 - teacher training : pluralistic approaches, awakening to languages and place of minority languages
How to integrate the issue of minority, stigmatization and exclusion into initial and in-service teacher training, including through training in language awareness and pluralistic approaches ?
What are the relationships between collective and individual dimensions? What place for the different actors (teachers, students, parents, school administration, etc.) to offer a space for changing relationships?
How to make room for minority languages ? What are the main challenges, tensions, constraints, obstacles and favorable conditions for the introduction of awakening to languages? and minority languages? How to change conceptions and practices students and teachers?
How to publicize the contributions of research and innovations in the field of plurilingualism and the enhancement of minority languages and cultures? With which methodologies, which strategies, which tools ?