Annual Report 2023 Entire Book - Flipbook - Page 14
Dr Terry Lamb
Why Language Teaching Matters – putting language education on the political agenda
Dr Terry Lamb represented the European Centre of Modern Languages (ECML) of which Ireland is a member
and which has inspired PPLI staff to keep up-to-date with international developments and provided ideas to
explore which have led to new project pathways in the Irish local context. Dr Lamb is a former languages
teacher and head of department in secondary schools in London, Professor of Languages and
Interdisciplinary Pedagogy at the University of Westminster. He was a member of the group that devised the
National Languages Strategy in the UK. He is also an official EU Expert on Intercultural Education, and he is
former president of FIPLV, which represents hundreds of thousands of language teachers around the world.
Another compelling reason to have Terry Lamb as a speaker was that he was part of the committee that
devised the 2022 Council of Europe Recommendation on Plurilingual and Intercultural Education for
Democratic culture.
In his keynote Dr Lamb described the Council recommendation and presented teachers with reasons why
language learning is crucial in shaping and developing democratic citizenship and how key aspects of the
recommendation support teachers with raising awareness of the crucial role of language teachers.
He presented a strong case on why diversity is enriching for everyone and why social inclusion and societal
integration depend on respect for and engagement with linguistic and cultural diversity.
He showed how the recommendation aims to give fresh impetus to the promotion,
development, and implementation of plurilingual and intercultural education, recognising
its importance for personal and professional development, equity, societal integration,
the exercise of human rights and participation in
democratic culture (CoE 2023) and explained the content and
function of plurilingual and intercultural education.
He challenged the audience to find more ways of including home
languages that are not part of the official curriculum, signed as well as
spoken, and where appropriate, to offer formal recognition and
certification of those languages provided.
He talked about how the teaching of languages in interaction
with one another needs to be explored, how the language
dimension of all subjects needs to be made explicit in
curriculum guidelines and how communication and
collaboration between teachers of different languages
and different curriculum subjects needs to be
encouraged and facilitated through the adoption
of inclusive whole-school/institution-wide
approaches to linguistic and intercultural
policy and practice.
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- PPLI ANNUAL REPORT 2023 -
