welcome
00:02
to this panel
organized by the world innovation summit
for education -
wise which is an initiative of qatar00:08
foundation for education science and
00:10
community development
00:11
my name is ahmed baghdadi i'm a research
00:13
manager at wise and i'm happy to be the
00:15
moderator for this panel
00:16
this panel is part of the global
00:18
learning festival 2020 which is held
00:20
virtually
00:21
from september 1st to 4th
00:24
as we all know as a result of the
00:26
current covet 19 pandemic
00:28
communities around the world are trying
00:30
to transform the learning systems to
00:32
ensure
00:32
resilience inclusivity and impact on a
00:35
digital
00:36
digital frontier and language is a key
00:38
component
00:39
of our learning systems uh building off
00:42
of the wise research report entitled
00:44
language policies in globalized context
00:47
which was published by
00:48
wise in 2019 in partnership with
00:51
carnegie mellon university in qatar
00:54
this discussion will explore how
00:56
multilingualism
00:57
challenges education systems to examine
00:59
how they develop the communities
01:01
to be cohesive and to value individual
01:03
identities of the community
01:06
this report published by wise and
01:08
carnegie mellon university is available
01:10
to download for free at wise
01:12
qatar.org
01:15
informed by the current global health
01:17
situation this panel will focus on how
01:20
the super diversity of cities today
01:22
changes the nature of policy responses
01:24
especially regarding which languages to
01:26
teach
01:27
and to teach in before i introduce the
01:31
panelists for this
01:32
uh for today i would like to mention
01:34
that this panel will run
01:36
for one hour and we're planning to have
01:38
a discussion with the panelists
01:40
for about 45 minutes and hope to have
01:42
around
01:43
15 minutes towards the end for questions
01:46
from the audience
01:47
so please write your questions in the
01:49
chat box and we will hope to
01:51
hope to try to answer as many of them as
01:53
possible
01:55
i'm pleased and honored to welcome a
01:57
group of expert panelists
01:58
today who will share their insights and
02:00
experiences on the topic of this panel
02:04
i'm pleased and honored to welcome
02:05
dudley reynolds who is a teaching
02:08
professor
02:09
of english at carnegie mellon university
02:11
in qatar
02:12
dudley has been a teacher and a
02:14
researcher for over 30 years
02:16
and has served as president of tesol
02:18
international which is the
02:20
association for teachers of english the
02:22
speakers of other languages
02:23
in 2016 and 2017 is also the author of
02:26
the wise research report we're
02:28
discussing today
02:30
i'm also pleased and honored to welcome
02:32
alin sarah who's the co-founder and ceo
02:34
of natakella
02:36
netakalam is a social enterprise that
02:38
connects refugees
02:39
and displaced persons with work
02:41
opportunities in the language sector
02:43
through the freelance economy and i'm
02:46
also happy to
02:47
welcome lori noel who has been a
02:49
journalist and writer for 25 years
02:51
he's written for publications in
02:53
australia the uk
02:55
canada and his work has been published
02:57
in the herald sun
02:58
the guardian the times in the daily mail
03:01
he's currently working in media and
03:02
public affairs for migrant
03:04
migrant refugees settlement agency ams
03:07
in
03:07
australia dudley
03:11
allen and laurie welcome to this panel
03:12
and thank you for joining us today
03:16
i would like to start uh this discussion
03:18
by um
03:19
uh sort of a big picture question about
03:22
how can we break social barriers through
03:24
language teaching in our societies and
03:26
what are the best
03:27
uh practices in this regard um i'd like
03:30
to start with dudley uh if you could
03:32
share with us your thoughts on on how we
03:34
can break social barriers through
03:36
language teaching i think you know the
03:39
the start to answer that question is
03:41
looking at where the social barriers are
03:43
coming from
03:44
and one of the patterns that we see
03:47
worldwide and especially in cities
03:50
is increasing diversification as a
03:53
result
03:53
of migration and
03:56
you know it's and this isn't going to
03:58
change it's a reality that cities
04:00
everywhere
04:01
are dealing with and as
04:05
uh current communities of
04:08
migrants get larger and as new migrant
04:11
groups
04:12
move into community um there's always
04:15
been a tendency to
04:17
to stick together from communities
04:19
within the larger community
04:22
and if we're not careful those
04:26
communities begin to erect barriers
04:28
between them
04:30
and i think that we have to recognize
04:33
the essential role
04:34
of language learning in
04:38
breaking down those barriers and
04:42
when i'm talking about language learning
04:43
i'm not just talking about a one-way
04:46
type of relationship where the host
04:49
community says
04:51
they need to learn our language in order
04:54
to be part of our community
04:56
what i'm talking about is a much more
04:58
reciprocal understanding of language
05:00
learning
05:01
where cities make an effort
05:04
to encourage the learning of
05:07
new languages that are being brought
05:09
into their community
05:11
they support programs that
05:14
teach community languages
05:18
and this is good for two reasons one
05:21
when
05:21
obviously when we learn someone else's
05:24
language
05:25
then we can see the world through their
05:27
eyes we can empathize
05:31
we can share information with them
05:35
but also just the very process of
05:38
language learning
05:39
in in a formal setting in a classroom
05:42
puts
05:43
people from different communities in
05:45
contact with each other
05:47
and it leads to to friendships it leads
05:50
to relationship building
05:53
um and that goes a long way i think
05:56
in breaking down
05:59
the tendency that exists everywhere to
06:01
erect barriers
06:04
really based on my experience as a
06:06
teacher and and um
06:08
and in my classes i used to you know
06:10
notice that students don't only learn
06:12
from teacher
06:13
from the teacher they learn from one
06:14
another and if someone is
06:16
you know i mean most of them might not
06:18
be native speakers of the language and
06:20
they can
06:20
they have different backgrounds and
06:22
different you know uh
06:24
proficiency levels so they might
06:26
actually learn from each other have you
06:27
seen this in
06:27
your experience absolutely and i mean
06:30
you have to think about
06:32
what is the content of language classes
06:34
right
06:35
it's not just grammar instruction it is
06:38
often questions about
06:42
values it's questions about how do you
06:44
do
06:45
this uh you know how you know what's
06:48
your process for doing something whether
06:50
it's cooking
06:52
um whether it's teaching
06:55
uh a practice to your children whatever
06:58
it is
06:59
and in this way students become
07:02
informants
07:03
for each other right and so there's
07:08
often as much peer learning going on
07:11
in a language classroom as there is a
07:13
teacher
07:14
pushing out some kind of knowledge
07:18
all right thank you um i'd like to turn
07:20
that to um
07:21
lori i think laurie i know you work
07:23
through your um your
07:25
job with ames australia with migrant
07:27
communities
07:28
and you you write about that and you're
07:30
you're engaged in
07:31
discussions around language in in the
07:33
migrant communities what are your
07:34
thoughts on how we can break social
07:36
barriers
07:37
through language teaching well i think
07:40
language
07:41
is very important in breaking down
07:44
social barriers and
07:45
and i think what dudley said about it
07:47
being not just a one-way
07:50
street is really important i mean a lot
07:52
of the work we do
07:53
is to help communities
07:57
tell their own authentic stories in the
07:58
mainstream media here so that there's
08:00
some understanding
08:01
in the broader society of their cultures
08:03
and their traditions
08:05
um and i guess you know australia's
08:08
it's kind of unique in that you know
08:10
it's uh
08:12
it traditionally was a sort of
08:13
monolingual
08:15
settler society but in the last 30 years
08:18
it's become one of the most diverse
08:19
countries in the world if not the most
08:21
diverse
08:22
um you know a third of us were born
08:25
overseas and
08:26
half of us have at least one parent who
08:28
was born overseas
08:29
and in the last 30 years the majority of
08:32
those migrants have come from countries
08:34
where
08:34
english is not the um the main language
08:37
and we found that
08:39
communities that are confident in their
08:41
own culture
08:42
and able to preserve and access their
08:45
own their own language and traditions
08:47
are also also more confidently and
08:50
successfully engaging with mainstream
08:52
society
08:53
um and we see this all the time in in
08:55
lots of communities
08:57
so um you know and
09:01
the basis to this is language you know
09:02
language is kind of everything it
09:04
in a sense you know defines a community
09:06
and if there's a
09:08
broader understanding in the wider
09:11
society that these languages are
09:13
important then
09:14
that kind of builds on social cohesion
09:16
and it becomes a really important factor
09:18
in
09:19
having a cohesive society
09:23
thank you i think australia would
09:24
probably be a perfect example for us to
09:26
consider here given the diversity and
09:29
you know the migrants and the settlers
09:31
and the you know
09:32
original uh people in the country so
09:35
this is um
09:35
interesting aline i know you work with
09:38
migrants but
09:38
maybe in a slightly different way you
09:41
don't necessarily teach them
09:43
language but you actually enable them to
09:44
teach their own language to others
09:47
would you mind sharing your thoughts
09:48
about uh how this can
09:50
break social barriers within a society
09:52
especially with regards to migrants
09:55
yes sure hi everyone it's it's nice to
09:57
be here
09:58
uh so yes um so uh i am the co-founder
10:01
of netaquellum which is a social
10:03
enterprise
10:04
that hires refugees as language teachers
10:07
over the internets
10:09
so echoing what has already been said by
10:12
the panelists um language is a window
10:15
into the world
10:17
language is a window into other cultures
10:20
and it's absolutely
10:21
critical to foster understanding and to
10:24
kind of bridge the gaps between the
10:25
different cultures in the world
10:26
especially
10:27
as communities diversify and people are
10:30
more
10:31
mobile and migrating much more um
10:34
i would say that the particularity of
10:36
what we're doing is
10:37
uh twofold uh with let's because
10:41
while we are trying to create um an
10:43
understanding of
10:44
different cultures we're also trying to
10:47
create an understanding of migrants and
10:49
particularly for
10:50
netakalam's case refugees
10:53
unfortunately we're living in a world
10:55
where there is a rise of populism
10:58
and there is um overall a negative view
11:01
of people migrating uh for whether it's
11:04
due to war or natural disaster or for
11:07
um economic purposes so what netankalem
11:10
does is not only bring languages to
11:12
people who might not speak them as
11:14
they're signing up to learn them
11:15
but their teacher is is a refugee and
11:18
that enables them to also
11:20
change their mindset and see a different
11:23
image than what might be painted in in
11:25
the media and political spheres
11:27
uh and seeing really that migrants are
11:29
just like you and me
11:31
we're all similar people with uh similar
11:33
goals and ambitions and uh refugees
11:36
especially have just
11:37
uh been subject to extraordinary
11:39
circumstances that have forced them to
11:41
flee
11:43
and um you know you've been doing this
11:45
for a number of years i understand and
11:47
and
11:47
could you tell us a little bit about how
11:49
successful this has been
11:51
uh so far yes sure so um sunata
11:55
was born out of lebanon in light of the
11:58
syrian refugee crisis
12:00
i'm myself lebanese born and raised in
12:02
the u.s
12:03
and the idea was how can we enable
12:06
syrian refugees in lebanon who are
12:08
typically barred from the local economy
12:10
not given a right to work and suffer
12:12
discrimination like many refugees
12:14
regardless of what country they find
12:16
themselves in well the idea was
12:19
they have an innate skill which is their
12:21
language
12:23
and across the world people are looking
12:25
to learn
12:26
languages many people who learn
12:28
languages need to practice
12:29
through conversation and so the idea is
12:31
very simple
12:32
um what if we could create a platform
12:35
which is what we did
12:36
that enabled people around the world
12:38
mostly americans i would say we started
12:40
with
12:40
who could learn arabic or at the very
12:42
least practice
12:43
um speaking arabic um with
12:46
refugees who would be in lebanon who
12:49
can't actually get a full-time
12:50
employment
12:51
but could then be paid to be the
12:53
language partner of
12:54
these individuals worldwide so since uh
12:57
the the founding in 2015 um so we're
13:01
going on five years old
13:02
um that's economics actually expanded so
13:05
we we do
13:06
work with many syrian refugees but we've
13:08
expanded to other arabic speaking
13:10
refugee communities iraqis palestinian
13:12
yemeni
13:13
um unfortunately there's there's many
13:15
refugee populations in the middle east
13:17
to choose from
13:18
uh we've also launched uh persian with
13:21
iranian and afghan refugees
13:23
spanish with venezuelan and central
13:25
american refugees as well
13:27
as french with francophone african
13:29
refugees and so
13:30
we're we're going on uh five years and
13:33
we've
13:33
connected with thousands of students but
13:35
also
13:36
have our programs running in schools and
13:38
universities and um the qatar foundation
13:40
has been a significant supporter of ours
13:43
for this work um and we're excited to be
13:46
hitting a million dollars in
13:48
disbursements to refugees as well
13:50
in the next couple of months wow this
13:53
sounds
13:53
amazing and it's super diverse as well
13:56
um
13:57
well speaking of the super diversity now
14:00
my next question is about
14:01
how the super diversity of cities today
14:03
uh change the nature of policy responses
14:06
especially with regards to language
14:07
teaching more specifically
14:09
which languages do we teach in and which
14:12
languages do
14:13
we teach and uh i'd like to ask this
14:15
question specifically
14:16
um um to uh dudley and see uh
14:19
based on on the report what do you think
14:22
how do you think we
14:24
should consider languages to teach in
14:25
the classroom and the language of
14:27
instruction
14:29
yeah you know and i'm going to repeat
14:32
something i already said which is
14:33
that um we have to move away from this
14:37
mindset
14:38
that when someone comes into our
14:40
community
14:42
the only aspect of language learning
14:45
that we need to worry about is teaching
14:46
them
14:47
our language and
14:51
what we're seeing you know every
14:54
individual
14:55
has a need to connect to their their
14:58
history
14:59
their identity they need to be part of a
15:02
community
15:03
and you know in terms of special
15:06
cohesion
15:07
and they also need economic opportunity
15:11
and economic opportunity in today's
15:13
world
15:15
often uh touches on globalization
15:19
and having language skills that allow
15:21
you to work
15:22
not only within your local place of
15:26
living but also
15:27
worldwide and
15:31
so what schools and communities are
15:34
increasingly having to do
15:36
is support find ways to support
15:40
a very sort of complex matrix
15:43
of needs and they're having to do it
15:46
in a way you know in a situation where
15:50
the languages that each student
15:53
in this are that satisfied each
15:55
student's needs
15:56
are different you're not you're no
15:59
longer teaching to a classroom
16:01
where you've got 30 students
16:04
and in particular their their heritage
16:08
languages are all the same
16:10
or even the languages that they want to
16:12
learn for for wider opportunity outside
16:15
the community
16:16
are the same and so we're having to
16:20
come up with new models for language
16:22
instruction
16:24
that support the learning of multiple
16:26
languages
16:28
at the same time cities are having to
16:31
come up
16:31
with ways to support uh
16:36
programs for for many different
16:39
languages
16:40
uh and they're you know there's some
16:42
great models out there that i can talk
16:44
about
16:45
uh if you're interested but um
16:49
it's it's how you deal
16:53
and and support diversity
16:56
um at the same time i mean i i like to
16:59
use the phrase that what we're
17:01
um we're no longer just teaching
17:04
multilingualism
17:06
we're teaching in every classroom
17:10
multilingualisms right
17:13
we're we're encouraging each student to
17:15
be multilingual
17:17
in whatever configuration matches their
17:20
needs
17:21
and that's that's a very different
17:23
paradigm
17:26
i totally agree i think this qatar is a
17:28
is a perfect
17:29
example for this and and if you can tell
17:32
us a little bit about how
17:34
you know um teaching languages or
17:36
teaching in
17:37
uh a specific or multiling language
17:40
languages and qatar
17:41
um happens and if there's anything that
17:43
we can learn from that
17:44
yeah i think i mean you know at this at
17:47
the classroom level in particular
17:49
i think we've got to get away from the
17:52
notion that
17:54
in order to you know teach a language
17:58
um you have to restrict
18:02
a conversation in the classroom to just
18:05
that language
18:06
and instead realize that it's possible
18:11
to
18:12
in a sense license multiple languages
18:15
in a classroom and that the focus
18:18
is much more on understanding language
18:22
and how language
18:23
works as a mode of communication
18:27
as as a sort of matching of resources
18:31
you know uh to communicative needs
18:35
it's about understanding what our
18:37
communicative needs are
18:39
um and and really sort of in a sense
18:43
building this meta awareness um
18:48
not just memorization of vocabulary or
18:52
grammar rules and that that's what
18:54
language teaching is
18:56
and uh you know there are lots of
18:59
classrooms
19:00
in qatar where they are adopting this
19:03
um this mode and i had a chance to
19:06
work some with the qatar foundation
19:10
uh schools and and qatar academy schools
19:14
um that are really pioneering some of
19:17
these
19:17
these methods because they have such
19:19
diverse classrooms
19:22
yeah i think it's uh it's perfect here
19:25
to see uh students from
19:26
various backgrounds in the same school
19:28
in the same classroom learning
19:30
you know in multiple languages i think
19:32
that would be uh that would be a pioneer
19:34
as you as you said
19:35
um i'd like now to focus more on the
19:38
impact
19:39
uh of teaching migrants um the local
19:41
language and their ability to integrate
19:43
into the society and there could be some
19:45
direct and indirect um
19:47
you know impacts of that lori based on
19:50
your experience and your
19:51
work with the migrant communities in
19:53
australia what do you what do you see as
19:55
the impact of
19:56
teaching the migrants the local language
20:01
well i guess at a fundamental level it's
20:03
what we do we support around
20:05
70 000 newly arrived migrants and
20:07
refugees
20:08
to settle in australia every year um and
20:11
what is critical
20:13
um in successful settlement for most
20:16
people is economic participation
20:18
so for most people that means finding a
20:22
job or starting a business
20:24
and having enough english to achieve
20:26
that is vital for for most people
20:30
and so having this economic
20:31
participation leads to social
20:34
participation
20:35
and access to mainstream society which
20:38
in turn builds
20:39
social cohesion across the whole of
20:41
society
20:42
um so it's it's it's very important that
20:46
i think that people you know learn the
20:49
language
20:50
of the workplace when they arrive in a
20:52
new society just last week
20:54
our federal government kind of
20:56
recognized this and made available
20:58
unlimited free english language tuition
21:02
to
21:03
anyone who's living here is a permanent
21:05
resident um
21:06
so that's a sort of quite a major step
21:08
for them and
21:09
uh i guess it it's underpinned by the um
21:13
the the government's um
21:17
desire to invest in people to make sure
21:19
that you know set them up for success in
21:21
terms of their
21:22
economic participation in this country
21:24
and um you know
21:25
it was broadly welcomed
21:28
right uh and did you notice any um any
21:31
differences between
21:32
uh migrants communities and refugee
21:35
communities uh i mean for migrants they
21:37
usually come in
21:38
through the standard immigration
21:39
programs and they have to prove they
21:41
have specific you know a certain level
21:42
of english proficiency but the refugees
21:44
might not have this
21:45
uh you know this level so uh did you
21:48
notice any differences
21:50
yeah no there are there are different
21:51
cohorts of people i mean most of the
21:53
skilled migrants come here
21:54
who come here will have you know
21:56
reasonably good english um
21:58
but maybe refugee communities who we
22:01
accept something like 20 000 refugees
22:03
every year and many of them
22:05
um have no english and some of them are
22:07
not literate in their own language
22:09
so um these programs that are run um
22:12
are um exist at several levels to co to
22:16
cater for people with
22:17
different um levels of of literacy and
22:20
um
22:20
you know there are also categories of
22:22
people such as you know the spouses of