Champlain College-Lennoxville has received funding to explore plurilingual teaching approaches and create strategies to help with the implementation of Law 14. The successful Entente Canada-Québec (ECQ) project proposal was written by Daniela Fernandes and Jordan Glass in collaboration with Bishop's University researcher Prof. Sunny Lau.
The grant will allow Champlain-Lennoxville teachers to have release to work on the project. Teachers will learn about plurilingual learning environments and teaching approaches; develop discipline-specific teaching strategies and tools; implement and assess the effectiveness of those strategies and tools in their classes; and finally, help document the teaching tools, guidelines, and resources developed through the project in order that they be shared with teachers at Champlain and throughout the Cégep network.
Project collaborator Prof. Sunny Lau Canada Research Chair in Integrated Plurilingual Teaching and Learning, and Bishop's University School of Education faculty member presented at Champlain's pedagogical development day in January 2024. Lau's well-received lecture on plurilingual approaches offered guidance to teachers in navigating the challenges presented by Law 14. As opposed to traditional accounts of language and teaching, plurilingualism tries to offer more dynamic views of language and language-learning. It focuses on the resources that speakers of multiple languages can bring to a shared learning environment in order to maximize the learning, comprehension, and created knowledge of the learning community as a whole. In addition to helping teachers, students, and the College effectively respond to new challenges presented by Law 14, it is expected that the project will have a globally positive impact on teaching and learning at Champlain, where teachers and students regularly work and study in languages other than their maternal language.
Prof. Sunny Lau
With a total of $297,580 in funding, the grant will allow Bishop's University School of Education students to be hired to assist; to recruit an IT technician to help with the development of digital materials at the end of the project; and for the results of the project to be shared at the annual Association québécoise de pédagogie collégiale.
ECQ grants support higher educational institutions in projects aimed at improving the quality of education offered to students of minority languages, and projects aimed at improving second-language learning.
