Festival of Learning

Open Session Limited to 20 Participants (First-Come, First-In)

This session will explain an institutional strategy developed to address the multilingual learning environment that is common in many BC post-secondary institutions given trends in the internationalization of education.  The Centre for English Language Learning Teaching and Research (CELLTR) was developed to address student and faculty needs in teaching and learning within this diverse linguistic landscape, and to reframe the narrative of students who have English as an additional language from a 'deficit' model to a resource model that supports their ongoing development of English.  

To implement this institutional strategy, we share how CELLTR faculty and staff from the Faculty of Education work collaboratively with faculty and academic leaders across the disciplines, as well as with staff from the various support units to coordinate, support, and conduct research on language in higher education.  Using an interdisciplinary ‘Community of Practice’ approach, we aim to develop a culture of dialogue and shared responsibility across the disciplines for the inclusion and success of our multilingual learners. 

To that end, we will share the emerging stories and lessons-learned of co-constructing existing and new courses to help develop students’ academic language and disciplinary literacy in English, while celebrating and using their home languages and cultures as resources for learning.  We will also discuss the importance of using collaborative inquiry and professional development activities to engage faculty in research-based best practices in teaching students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.  

The session will encourage dialogue, a sharing of stories and questions, and lessons-learned in language-related issues in higher education from the participants.

Presenters 
Valia Spiliotopoulos, Director, CELLTR and Associate Professor of Professional Practice, Faculty of Education, SFU
Saskia Stille, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Education, SFU
Joel Heng Hartse, Lecturer, Faculty of Education, SFU