On Tuesday, April 24, an open workshop is organized with the local collaborators of the Pädagogische Hochschule about the topic of

“Teachers as change agents – innovative ways of bridging education and the world of work”.

The precise schedule of this workshop includes:

The workshops at BMR are designed to promote discussion and exchange between leading R&D and innovation actors. The themes of the different workshops are related to the “Luxembourg Cluster Initiative”: BioHealth, EcoInnovation, ICT, Materials and Production Technologies, Space.

The three contributors of the Smart living workshop are:

• Dr Rod McCall, Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), University of Luxembourg

• Prof. Dr Charles Max, Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust (SnT), University of Luxembourg

• Prof. Dr Didier Stricker, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI GmbH

The workshop takes place in Luxembourg on May 22. More information is available at:

http://www.business-meets-research.lu/Home/About-Business-meets-Research

Other contributions within this symposium were:

Learning to Teach in School-Based Courses: Kenneth Zeichner / Katherina Ann Payne (University of Wisconsin – Madison)

Learning to Teach English in Urban Settings : Lauren Gatti (University of Wisconsin – Madison)

Promoting Collaborative Approaches to Developing Effective Teachers: The Contribution of Cultural-Historical Activity Theory: Viv Ellis, Anne Edwards (University of Oxford – UK)

On the 2nd of February, the European Commission is organising a full day of events about its ongoing work in language learning which will include presentations on the future programme, the various initiatives of the Multilingualism unit, a round table with a panel of experts and last but not least a workshop with projects. The workhop will take place between 13h and 14h15 and present

- a short introduction
- three projects presenting their results, pedagogical approach, methodologies, and impact
- a session of questions and answers

Moreover, beyond the workshop contribution, the LS6 project will also be present at the official EC stand the four days of the fair and initiate interactive activities concerning language learning and social media. The idea is to invite expo-visitors and interested volunteers to share their thoughts, stories, testimonies… about meaningful language learning processes and social media (as promoted within the LS6 project). The object is to move the visitor from a viewer to a contributor through

- tweets or blog posts (text-based),
- 60 second video clips,
- short audio comments
- screencasts as commented activities on a website

All these contributions are disseminated instantly via our dica-lab LS6 Blog with the request/option for further commenting and extending the contributions on the site.

It would be great meeting you in Paris or on our blog. Please find the programme attached to this post

Expolangues_programme_overview

Two major topics of the Luxembourg economic context and the related challenges will be addressed in particular during this day, i.e.

• Innovation and/from diversity in Luxembourg
• Multilingual and -cultural issues of the Luxembourg working context

The workshop is part of an international project, which brings together experts from Finland, Austria, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg in order to collect, reflect and disseminate knowledge and best practices of diverse co-operation and partnership solutions between educational institutions and working life. The aim of the project is to improve students’ possibilities to make quicker/easier steps into working life from higher education as mentioned by the project title “QUICKER STEPS FROM EDUCATION TO WORKING-LIFE”. The project is funded by the European Social Fund and the Finnish Centre for Economic Development, Transport and Environment (Central Finland ELY-Centre).

The workshop (see documents attached) will take place on Tuesday, November 8, from 09.00 to 17.00 h at the Faculty of Science, Technology and Communication (Campus Kirchberg).

It is free of any charges and the project group would be very pleased to welcome you amongst the workshop participants. You can enroll for the event using the link below

http://www.quickersteps.net/

Download: flyer and workshop program 

Research papers at International ISCAR congress, Rome, Sept. 5-10, 2011

The following research papers and panels have been accepted and were presented at the 2011 ISCAR international congress, Rome.

http://www.iscar2011.org/eng/info_iscar.php

Symposium – Beyond acquisition and participation: empirical studies on dialectical learning approaches in early education (Chair: Charles Max – Univ. of Luxembourg, Discussant: Jaan Valsiner – Clarke University)

• Research Paper 1: Sociodramatic play activities as mediating tools in multilingual interactions (Ludwig Marnie, Gudrun Ziegler – University of Luxembourg)
• Research Paper 2: “Participation framework” as an analytical artefact for analysing early language development in a multilingual contexts (Delia Wirtz, Gudrun Ziegler – University of Luxembourg)
• Research Paper 3: “There fits more in than there” – “Doing science” through interactions in the early childhood classroom (Charles Max, Christina Siry – University of Luxembourg)

Symposium – Enhancing professional development by “talking” – Interactional perspectives on mentoring practices as intervention devices (Chair: Gudrun Ziegler – University of Luxembourg, Discussant: Jaan Valsiner – Clarke University)

• Research paper 1: Tutoring as a developmental process across institutional boundaries – An activity-theoretical analysis of tutoring in initial teacher education (Charles Max – University of Luxembourg)
• Research paper 2: “It’s (not) only conversation …” – Features of mentor-mentee talk and their implications for learning from an interactional perspective (Nadja Weber – University Kaiserslautern, Gudrun Ziegler – University of Luxembourg)
• Research paper 3: Clinical supervision interaction as a site for learning – insights on talk as social action (Sirpa Laitinen-Vaänänen – JAMK)

Individual Research paper: Educational design in/for diversity in higher education: devices for constructing expertise in new forms of learning (Gudrun Ziegler – University of Luxembourg, Sirpa Laitinen-Väänänen – JAMK)

Professors Charles Max and Gudrun Ziegler of University of Luxembourg hosted DICA-lab’s research workshop on “Learning in multilingual contexts” which took place on Campus Walferdange,  August 31 – September 2, 2011. The twenty participants – of University of Kaiserslautern,  Northeastern University,  Luxembourg University and European School (Luxembourg) – discussed recent outcomes of running research projects.

August 31st,  2011

Dr. J.C. Choi,  PhD-candidate C. Albanese and Prof. Ziegler presented outcomes of the study on phonological awareness in multilingual subjects involving Korean. Results point to an effect of school literacy practices (Luxembourg’s public schools) with regard to German and French as well as writing practices regarding Luxembourgish and Portuguese.

Prof. C. Max and project-members M. Kracheel and Prof. G. Ziegler provided a short overview of the results of the CODI-SCILE-A project,  highlighting the specific nature of learning in multilingual contexts with regard to early science learning as these results are currently presented by the project members at international conferences EARLI,  ESERA and ISCAR during the month of September 2011.

September 1st,  2011

Findings in the area of English as a learner language in multilingual contexts were in focus of the workshop session conducted by N. Durus, Dr. N. Family and Prof. G. Ziegler. The project under the supervision of Prof. Ziegler draws from a unique database,  recent findings present features of multilingual learners practices in English as an international language. These findings have been discussed during this workshop session as regards their implications for classroom management and teaching routines in the context of Luxembourg’s public as well as European school. Moreover,  the workshop session questioned the role of English in the light of school- and work-driven multilingualism in Luxembourg’s society.

The workshop session lead by Prof. S. Allen discussed recent findings on gesture-speech relationship in multilingual children and adults from a cross-linguistic analysis involving German, Turkish as well as Korean and Japanese.

PhD-candidate A. Ouafo presented the methodology of the research project which focuses on Luxembourgish as an additional language for migrant multilinguals arriving,  living and working in Luxembourg. Entering her second year of PhD-work under the supervision of Prof. G. Ziegler,  the workshop session dealt with methodological questions on the tracing of learning in everyday activities.

September 2nd,  2011

Workshop participants together with the editorial team of the edited volume “Professionalising multilingualism in higher education” discussed the contributions which have been submitted to the editors in line with the 2010 conference of  “Multilingual Universities” ( http://multilingualuniversities.net/blog/ ). The two workshop sessions aimed at gathering the comments by the reviewers so far and to discuss the planned sections of the volume as presented by Prof. G. Ziegler and collaborators.

Exploring the impact of language norms on second language development, the current paper investigates
learners’ systematic developmental errors in Luxembourgish as a second language. The comparative analysis of interview data from six primary school children (age: 6) focuses on the quantitative as well as qualitative indicators of language development, paying particular attention to multilingual issues which are tangible from the coded data set. Besides the Luxembourgish language, this concerns mainly German, French and Portuguese. The analysis specifically highlights

1. Syntactic-pragmatic interface of language development, when young learners of Luxembourgish as a L2 orient to the norm of Luxembourgish (e.g., self-correction) as a (not stabilized) standardized language in the construction of their discourse
2. Systematic errors in the (particularly rich domain of) choice of grammatical gender and number, both in nouns and determiners used by the early L2 learners;
3. Potential correlations between (displayed) norm orientations, systematic language change (e.g., codeswitching from/to Luxembourgish to a specific language at a particular grammatical moment) and their relevant discursive/syntactic systematics.

The study points to the importance of norm orientation in the socio-discursive construction of children’s talk at specific points/in specific areas for the development of the target language. Specifically, the findings highlight the fact that the children’s choice of certain syntactic structures entails a non-orientation to the standardized (yet non-stabilized) norm of the target-Luxembourgish.

The team working with Ass.-Prof. Gudrun Ziegler on multilingual and multimodal interactions in complex engineering processes received this year’s best paper award at the International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising, held in Aachen from 20-22 June, 2011 (http://www.ice-conference.org/).

The successful paper was selected among 170 papers and deals with critical instances within concurrent engineering processes in satellite research industries. The jury congratulated Prof. Ziegler’s interdisciplinary team comprising Ju Youn Song and Martin Kracheel, both 2010-graduates from the UL’s Master “Learning and Development in Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts” and PhD-candidate Hubert Moser (Luxspace/UL) for the group’s innovative approach to analyze and assess ‘Concurrent Engineering Processes’ in the space industries.

The paper marks a crucial step in the successful cooperation between the “Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt in der Helmholtz Gesellschaft”, (http://www.dlr.de/en/) and DICA-lab at UL and highlights the impact of interdisciplinary research at the intersection between technology research, media and the learning sciences in diversity contexts.

The presentation by Claudia, Katerina and Mikkel was very successful and the Head of Unit Multilingualism of the European Commission warmly congratulated the team for their lively and highly interactive contribution.

Pictures of the event are available here

The video created for this purpose is here

Click here to view the embedded video.