Creating Space for Multilingualism in Superdiverse Schools

This project, funded by the Goldsmiths Research Impact Fund, responds to a significant gap in teacher professional development in the field of multilingual pedagogies in mainstream primary schools in England. Its aim is to create a conceptual and practical Toolkit for Implementing Multilingual Pedagogies in Mainstream Primary Schools in England with teachers, children and their families. The Toolkit is designed to enable child agency and teacher reflexivity and support a whole school approach to multilingual pedagogies. Inspired by colleagues, such as García & Flores (2012), Cummins (2021), multilingual pedagogies are understood as pedagogical approaches that acknowledge, explore, include, engage, use and promote children’s diverse linguistic and cultural repertoires and identities in the classroom. Including multilingual approaches to critical primary school pedagogy aims to challenge the monolingual mindset in primary schools and advocate for a more linguistically and culturally inclusive narrative.

The Toolkit contains pedagogical principles and pathways, multilingual activities, curricular links across primary school years, points for further teacher reflection and development and resources that can be integrated into day-to-day classroom routines and practices.

The Toolkit is being developed as part of the ‘Multilingual Club’ (September 2024 – March 2025) in collaboration with Wyvil primary school in Lambeth. Building on the multilingual activities and resources in the ‘Multilingual Club’, we will work with four teachers to adapt them to their classrooms and co-develop the Toolkit further.

The Toolkit is aimed at senior leadership teams (SLTs), and teachers and learning support staff in state maintained primary schools, and academies and School Services in local authorities in England.

Project team

Dr Vally Lytra, PI
Dr Cristina Ros i Solé, Co-PI
Faris Sanhaji, Co-PI
Dr Thomas Quehl, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Jacqueline Crawford, Teacher- Co-researcher, Wyvil Primary School

For more information about the project please contact: Dr Vally Lytra