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Interactive dual language immersive learning space
Start date: Sep 1, 2014, End date: Feb 28, 2017 PROJECT  FINISHED 

This project arises from two long-standing, global and well documented educational challenges: firstly Eastern European Traveller, including Roma pupils' poor participation and persistently low achievement in education, and secondly the decline of home language use in primary classrooms (age 5-11) as a pedagogic tool to raise the academic achievement of pupils whose home language(s) differs from the official language of schools. The project’s response to these challenges will begin in UK with the development of an innovative integration of two technologies working in tandem (digital table and large scale 360 degree projected displays) to act as a medium through which pupils can experience high quality dual language learning. Accompanying software will incorporate sound files in pupils’ home languages alongside English, and pupils will be encouraged to communicate in whichever language supports their activity, i.e. their home language or the language of the school or a mixture of both. The activities operating through this technology will be enquiries (problems or puzzles) coherent with schools’ curriculum subject knowledge requirements, and which will therefore demand purposeful language use. The objective is to improve the Eastern European pupils’ motivation and engagement towards institutionalised school activity, at the same time as improving their proficiency in using cognitive academic language for learning in both their home language and English. Collaboration with parents, and the transformation of teachers’ attitudes towards Traveller communities is an integral part of the project so that children’s cultural and linguistic backgrounds are made available to schools by parents who trust this information is respected, valorised and used by teachers to improve the educational and social inclusion of their children. At the same time families become more knowledgeable about institutionalised education. The results of developments in UK and the lessons learned will act as a springboard for work in phase two to promote a dual language pedagogic approach in France, Finland and Romania, appropriate to the needs of their children and context. The project is therefore iterative in its responsiveness to lessons learned from one context applied sensitively to another. To achieve this, partners from 4 European countries will work together. The coordinator of the project (at Newcastle University, UK) is an expert in the field of teacher education in equality and diversity who has close collaborative links with local schools including WestgateHill Primary School where over 90% of pupils speak English as an additional language, and where the dual language immersive space will be created by the technology for the benefit of local Eastern European Traveller pupils, including Roma in the first instance. The project also benefits from two other Newcastle University participants who provide expertise in enquiry-based learning, and in interaction design. The co-coordinator of the project (at Middlesex University, UK) is another expert in teacher education and collaboration with multilingual communities. The UK participants are joined by a professor of multiculturalism (at Helsinki University) an expert on funded European projects that focus on equality who coordinates a team of two other Helsinki University participants whose expertise includes the development and promotion of bilingual pedagogies in Finnish schools and video and linguistic analyses. A professor of education (at Institut Catholique de Paris) in France where a large number of Romanian migrants have settled in recent years is the French partner. The Finnish and French participants will identify collaborative school partners where similar technologies will be used during the project. Finally, the project has a Romanian partner who is president of the people-to-people foundation, who built and runs a thriving school for Roma children in Oradea, Romania. Through wide-scale dissemination of all outputs from the project, the long term aim is to effect practice changes in the inclusion and education of Eastern European Traveller including Roma pupils across Europe in order to positively impact on increased school attendance and improved educational achievement. We expect the project to lead to greater teacher understanding and responsiveness to cultural and linguistic diversity, with improved competency specifically in teaching pupils from Eastern European Traveller including Roma groups. For parents we aim for the project to contribute towards an improved understanding of the cultural values and practices of institutionalised education in the partner countries. Taken together, the intended impacts on pupils, their parents and schools, could have substantial longer term impacts on the inclusion of and more active participation of Eastern European Traveller communities in society in each partner country, contributing towards greater social cohesion.
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