We are delighted to introduce ‘Post-pandemic Pedagogies for Language Education’, the latest special collection from Modern Languages Open. The range of essays contained within this collection focus on research-led practice which looks at how language education has responded to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic from primary schools to higher education, based on a series of ‘dialogues’ between educators working in six areas.
Here, the co-ordinating editors of the collection, Carmen Herrero (Manchester Metropolitan University), and Paul Spence (King’s College London), provide a backdrop for the research which aims to encourage reflection on how we engage with language education more broadly and the ways this might change in the future of digital and hybrid learning environments.
Read the the collection Open Access >
Q&A with Paul Spence and Dr Carmen Herrero
To celebrate the release of this special collection, we spoke to the editors, Paul and Carmen in an exclusive Q&A all about the project and its aims:
1. Could you tell us a bit more about the ‘Sprint’ model of writing used to compose your collection, ‘Post-pandemic Pedagogies for Language Education’?
[Carmen and Paul]: As we explain in our introduction, the ‘sprint’ model belongs to a wider spectrum of interactive, collaborative and ‘social’ forms of content production which include hackathons and email dialogues. The most common kind of ‘sprint’ is the ‘book sprint’, where for a fixed period of time (usually around a week), a group of people with different skills get together in one place to plan, write, design and publish a book on a particular topic. This format lends itself to writing manuals or guides for example, but has started to be used effectively in academic research to foster rapid dialogue around a particular topic. Modern Languages Open has already published two previous publications following a ‘sprint’ model, and the second of those was the first special collection in the ‘Digital Modern Languages’ section to which this new special collection belongs.
In reality, academic ‘sprints’ are not as quick as other sprints because academics still typically want some kind of peer review, but they can help researchers swiftly develop and contrast ideas at the writing stage. In our case, the sprints have all been online, often with people who barely know each other, if at all, and it is surprising how collaborative these groups can be given the right conditions. The outcome is less formal than a traditional academic publication, but it facilitates a sense of dynamic but informed dialogue which is hard to achieve in other publication channels.
2. Can you expand on your methodology for discussing the particular challenges faced by the Modern Languages sector during these periods of remote learning? How did you approach this research?
[Carmen]: First, as happened to many other language educators, I experienced the challenge of remote/online teaching. My research and practice experience in this area came from my participation in an Erasmus + project: Communication in Mobile and Virtual Work (CoMoViWo) project (2014-2017). The aim was to support HE students and educators, as well as managers and employees, to develop their overall language proficiency in a second language (Spanish and English as lingua franca) to face the communicative challenges of working in the digital age: communication literacy in online and virtual environments, employability skills and intercultural communicative competence. Based on the research carried out in the first phase and the feedback obtained from surveys and interviews, I was responsible for the coordination, co-creation and delivery of the modules (courses in English and Spanish that were later available as Massive Open Online Courses in Canvas.
During the pandemic, I attended and participated in many events which sparked constructive discussions related to methodologies and strategies for modern language teaching. I think it was very fruitful, for example, that collaborations were established between different institutions to share ideas and practices, to look for solutions together, such as the Virtual Abroad group. In a way, there were valuable examples of how digital transformations were transforming our discipline before the pandemic, particularly around the use of technology in language education. The lockdown measures accelerated the process of digital transformation and demonstrated how bottom-up and communities-driven initiatives were the most effective way to address the challenges.
For contextualising and analysing the discussion and trends, it was particularly useful to account for the different initiatives taking place in the UK to reposition the teaching of Modern languages in the aftermath of Brexit. Although we were focusing on language education in the UK, we investigated how the pandemic affected different disciplines in the UK and the teaching of languages in other countries.
[Paul]: I haven’t been a language teacher for some time now, but I have been involved in many projects involving the digital mediation of Modern Languages in recent years. One of these was the AHRC-funded Language Acts & Worldmaking project, where Renata Brandao and I did research exploring the factors shaping (or limiting) critical digital engagement in the field as a whole, and advocating for a ‘languages’-centred critique of digital culture, what we called ‘disrupting digital monolingualism’. Another is the ‘digital modern languages’ seminar series which Naomi Wells and I started, and to which this Modern Languages Open section is connected.
The driver for this collaboration with Carmen was to highlight various examples of best practice we were seeing in different areas of language education (in this case mostly in the UK, due to our research networks on this topic) right across a student’s language journey from primary to higher education and beyond. The move to forced remote learning during the pandemic obliged pretty much everyone in the environments we work in to engage very quickly with digital tools and environments, and in some cases this was purely instrumental, whereas in other cases, the engagement both enriched and was enriched by solid pedagogical rationales. Our aim in bringing such a diverse group of people together to debate these impacts was to explore longer term and deeper critical digital (or to be more precise hybrid) literacies and pedagogies which have emerged as a result.
3. Tell us more about your decision to use online asynchronous written dialogues as a means of better understanding different experiences of teaching and learning languages within the pandemic.
One of the things which most impresses us about this format is the way in which people often open themselves up to these collaborative exercises, which imply a fair amount of trust and generosity (in tone as well as time) in what is usually a quite new experience for them. Bear in mind that people often don’t know each other at all, and are operating in a purely textual online environment with no direct contact. The challenge is that the dialogues take place in a short space of time, and inevitably life throws up surprises which make it hard for everyone to participate equally during that period, but we feel that these dialogues proved how much can be achieved when there is a desire to communicate on a strategic topic, a clear plan and a relatively short cut-off point.
[Carmen and Paul]: Synchronous and asynchronous modes both have different advantages. In the case of asynchronous written dialogues, the advantage is that contributors have more time to contemplate what their fellow contributors say, and to refine their own responses. They can even be written in quite a formal academic manner with full scholarly references, although we fostered a less formal approach here in order to facilitate a more dialogic approach where participants were sharing ideas and resources in a more open way.
4. What kinds of new critical literacies do you believe have the most potential to better serve modern language learning (and pedagogies) for an increasingly media-diverse classroom?
[Carmen and Paul]: As has been noted by many scholars concerned with the relationship between language and education, critical literacies are shaped by the proliferation of digital technologies and by the challenges that we face in real and virtual spaces shaped by economic, social and cultural flows.
Considering the role of digital media in contemporary digital ecologies, we need to develop and enhance the skills needed in formal and non-formal education for reading and creating multimodal texts (the ability to decode and produce multimodal productions). Equally essential is to develop the digital literacies required to reap the benefits offered by the technological affordances of the many apps and other digital tools. In our introduction we included examples of multiliteracies-based interventions focused on digital storytelling and transmedia practices, as well as the growing number of scholarship and research works on technology-enhanced teaching and learning and digital pedagogies. Likewise, the impact of digital communication practices in language teaching required the development of plurilingual and mediation skills, and digital intercultural literacy.
5. How do you envisage the future of student-centred learning experiences within the modern languages, particularly within hybrid teaching environments? How did you go about exploring this within the collection?
[Carmen and Paul]: In our introduction, we mention how powerful the impact of digitally-enhanced instruction has been on student engagement. The future of student-centred learning experiences requires us to acknowledge the potential affordances of online instruction which provide greater accessibility, flexibility and interactivity, for both students and teachers, while also identifying and addressing the risks and disadvantages. As a result of the experiences and effect of remote teaching during the pandemic, we think hybrid formats of learning and delivery are here to stay, but the question is how to make this use of digital and multimedia technologies in language teaching “effective” and “creative”. Another key topic is how to respond and take advantage of the transmedia practices and informal learning that students experience in digital environments. In this special collection the ‘dialogues’ offer many examples of digital transformation in language education and allow us to compare and contrast how the spread of hybrid teaching is expanding the current foreign language education paradigm across different sectors/areas.
Articles contained within the collection:
· Carmen Herero (Manchester Metropolitan University)
· Paul Spence (King’s College London)
1. Primary schools (A dialogue)
· Bernadette Clinton (Dialogue Lead), Languages Consultant at Hackney Education
· Anna Grainger, (Contributor), Alderman’s Green Primary School, Coventry and co-founder of Coventry City of Languages
· Raquel Tola Rego (Contributor), Parkwood International Spanish Primary School, Hackney and Languages Consultant
· Wendy Walker (Contributor), German and Spanish Peripatetic Teacher in 3 schools in the London Borough of Enfield
2. Secondary schools (A dialogue)
· Helen Myers (Dialogue lead), Association for Language Learning
· Jane Basnett (Contributor), Downe House School, North London
· Mike Elliott (Contributor), Dr Challoner’s Grammar School
Vincent Everett (Contributor), Northgate High School
· Rebecca Jones (Contributor), Swavesey Village College, Cambridgeshire
· Sabine Pichout (Contributor), Swavesey Village College Cambridgeshire
· Jill Snook (Contributor), Monmouth Comprehensive School
· Jennifer Wozniak (Contributor), The Hollins Technology College
3. Language Teaching in Higher Education (A dialogue)
· Benoît Guilbaud (Dialogue Lead), University of Sussex
· Cinzia Bacilieri (Contributor), University of York
· Marina Micke (Contributor), University of Sheffield
· David Tual (Contributor), University of Cambridge
· Catherine Xiang (Contributor), London School of Economics
4. Early Career Higher Education (A dialogue)
· Marta F. Suarez (Dialogue lead), Manchester Metropolitan University
· Dominique Carlini Versini (Contributor), Durham University.
· Olivia Glaze (Contributor), University of Exeter.
· Jennifer Lynch (Contriutor), Liverpool John Moores.
· Marina Rabadán Gómez, University of Liverpool.
· Sandra Strigel, University of Liverpool and the Open University
· James Illingworth (Dialogue Lead), Institute for Study Abroad
· Akiko Furukawa (Contributor), SOAS University of London
· Mark Gant (Contributor), University of Chester
· Guy Puzey (Contributor), University of Edinburgh
6. Teaching and Cultural Institutions (A dialogue)
· Pablo Martínez Gila (Dialogue lead). Instituto Cervantes in Manchester
· Xavier Lavry (Contributor). Alliance Française in Manchester
· Martha Papaspiliou (Contributor). Hellenic Center in London.
· Andrea Pfeil (Contributor). Goethe-Institut in London.
· Catherine Xiang (Contributor). Confucius Institute for Business at LSE
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