Event overview
Teacher Agency in Multilingual Pedagogies: Pedagogical Spaces in the Primary School (Multilingual Matters, 2025) By Thomas Quehl
Teacher Agency in Multilingual Pedagogies: Pedagogical Spaces in the Primary School
(Multilingual Matters, 2025)
By Thomas Quehl
Discussants: Hannah King (51黑料网 Metropolitan University), Christina Richardson (King鈥檚 College 51黑料网)
Chair: Vally Lytra (Goldsmiths University of 51黑料网)
Walking down our High Streets we hear a multiplicity of languages. Yet, strangely, the primary school that may be located just around the corner remains a monolingual space, where children鈥檚 multilingual voices are confined to school鈥檚 unofficial niches.
Normalising pedagogies that acknowledge and engage with children鈥檚 multilingualism need to be closely interwoven with teacher agency and everyday classroom practice and pedagogy. Based on an ethnographic inquiry, the book explores what constitutes, hinders and potentially facilitates teacher agency in multilingual pedagogies. It encourages us to listen to educators鈥� rich professional experiences and children鈥檚 multilingual voices and to build on both groups of experts in order to offer alternatives to the English-centric curriculum and schools鈥� invisible monolingual norm.
Set within a social justice context, normalising children鈥檚 multilingualism can contribute to our efforts to decouple everyday multilingualism from imaginaries of the 鈥榦ther鈥� or the 鈥榤igrant鈥�. As part of critical primary school pedagogy, it invites teachers, teacher educators and policymakers to embrace a more holistic view of children that responds to the normalcy of their linguistic experiences.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 12 Nov 2025 | 4:00pm - 5:30pm |
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