Keynote speakers
Dr. David Marsh
Shaping the Future
Innovation through Integration
A 2020 update of a landmark meta-study on neuroscientific insights into the value of languages originally produced for the European Commission, has recently been published. The findings directly relate to how integrated content and language learning can contribute to developing global competences (OECD PISA October 2020).
The Impact of Language Learning on Mind and Brain reveals six key advantages for people who use more than one language. The advantages relate to our neural architecture and memory, how we think, learn, understand other people, solve problems, and safely navigate the information-rich digital world.
Research of this type is fundamentally important for those of us engaged in forms of bilingual education, especially if we apply CLIL techniques. It provides us with new evidence to support the theoretical foundations of CLIL practices, deeper understanding of why some teaching techniques seem to work better than others, and a profound justification for giving children and young people access to this form of integrated language learning.
In the spirit of making 2021 our year of wonder (annus mirabilis) the presentation will attempt to bring these three features together and, hopefully, provide some form of inspiration, practical ideas, and optimism for embracing our post-pandemic future.
David Marsh is an internationally renowned expert on educational innovation, strategy and practice who has contributed to development of education in Finland over 25 years. He has experience of tasks in over 40 countries, contributed to over 150 publications, presented over 120 invited keynotes at international conferences, and received 5 degrees from the United Kingdom, Finland and Spain. Long-term experience of working on educational development across the European Union has been complemented with assignments in Africa (Ethiopia, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa), Central & East Asia (Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea), Iceland, India, Kosovo, Middle East (KSA, UAE, Qatar), Russia, Southeast Asia (Brunei, Hong Kong, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Philippines, Vietnam), North America, (Mexico, USA), and South America (Argentina, Colombia, Peru).
Having been instrumental in developing processes for transforming curricular practices including language learning, he co-launched Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) under the auspices of the European Commission, and now works on developing, piloting, and analysing the implementation of CLIL models globally. His work has been recognized through various awards including the English-speaking Union (2008), Estonian Educational Sciences (2009), recognition from the UAE (2012), Doctor honoris causa at Valencian International University (2013), International Academic Board of the Inter-University Institute for Quality Practice (2016), and Honorary Chair, Catedrático Extraordinario de Educación Bilingüe, UCAM, Spain (2017).
In recent years, his work on transforming education has become increasingly wide-ranging. This extends from designing blueprints for international schools and teacher professional development to academic, analytic and research tasks. A special focus of interest is the impact of languages on the mind and brain, special and specific needs, and adjusting educational practices to accommodate the needs of digitally astute young people.
Dr. Ana Llinares
Multidisciplinary perspectives on integration in CLIL: exploring language and content integrated
teaching and assessment
CLIL programmes have certainly grown in popularity around the world. In spite of decades of research on CLIL, there are still many challenges and pending issues that need to be addressed. In this presentation I will focus on two of these issues: the challenge of teaching and assessing content and language in integration and the challenge of organising multidisciplinary teams with content and language teachers and researchers working collaboratively on content and language integrated teaching and assessment. The session will offer insights from research within the UAM CLIL research group (http://www.uam-clil.org) on content and language integration in students’ production and classroom practices as well as the results from seminars with content and language teachers sharing their work on content and language integrated learning and assessment from the perspective of their own discipline. In this talk I will advocate for the role of CLIL in enhancing multidisciplinary work and research, which this pandemic has shown as the only way to address societal challenges successfully in the present and in the near future.
Ana Llinares is Professor in the English department at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM). She teaches second language acquisition and content and language integrated learning (CLIL), both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She coordinates the UAM-CLIL research group (http://www.uam-clil.org) and has published widely on content and language integrated learning at primary and secondary school levels, mainly applying systemic functional linguistic models. She has co-authored the book The Roles of Language in CLIL (2012), published by Cambridge University Press, and has recently co-edited the volume Applied Linguistics Perspectives on CLIL (2017), published by John Benjamins.