Multilingual Education and India

Learning new things from a webinar can be quite enriching. Presenting at a webinar is even a richer experience: Recently I helped design and execute a webinar for the Early Learning Network of India (ELNI) hosted by Tata Trust. Good to talk about the reasons for and the principles for using the local languages in the classroom! The Early Learning Network of India (ELNI) invited education specialists to provide a global perspective in integrating local languages into early education for a webinar. The ELNI, supported by Tata Trusts, regularly hosts webinars focused on early literacy and the use of local languages in classrooms. These sessions bring together educators, researchers, and policymakers to share international and national insights on multilingual education. The ELNI is led by Dr. Shailaja Menon, and promotes early literacy through teacher development and multilingual, research-informed practices in collaboration with institutions and NGOs. During this presentation the topics ...

The Language Learning Foundation has been generous enough to share their  webinar series which discusses the complexities of Multilingual Education in the Indian linguistic context in light of the National Education Policy 2020 and NIPUN Bharat guidelines. These webinars were organised during the month of August - September, 2022 and are readily available resources accessible on YouTube. The webinar links have been provided in the titles below and in the Resources section.  Three webinars were organised. The first two were conducted in Hindi, and the third one in English. The links and details of each webinar are given below. The speakers’ contributions were very valuable as the speakers were experts in their fields belonging to institutions such as Harvard, NCERT, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, UNICEF, LLF, experienced teachers,  and MLE specialists.  Webinar 1: Inclusion of the Children’s Home Languages in Foundational Learning This Webinar discussed the importance of incl...

Happy International Mother Language Day! -Studies in Assam & Webinar Today, as I was running some errands, I noticed a lot of action on the roadside. As someone was talking passionately through a microphone I assumed it was a political rally. But then I heard one phrase coming back again and again: "Matri Bhasha". Of course, I thought, today is International Mother Language Day! That gives me a  good excuse to highlight a new initiative in Assam. It is also a good reason to recommend a webinar multilingual education later today. February 21 is the International Mother Language Day. The day is to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism around the world. The theme of the year 2022 is “Using technology for multilingual learning: Challenges and opportunities”.

Dear multilingual Education friends, Next week on Monday the 27th there will be a webinar on " Using an Additional Language as the Medium of Instruction: Transition in Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education " The Webinar will be led by Dr Agatha van Ginkel who I happen to know as we both speak the same mother tongue: Dutch! Dr van Ginkel has a wide experience on as well the grassroot level as in national and international level projects. Highly recommended! Note in the below announcement that you need to sign up as the space is limited.