Mercator Network Conference: Developments in the curriculum of language teaching and learning, at primary school level and in secondary education
Leeuwarden, The Netherlands, 17-18 September 2009
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The Mercator Network of Language Diversity Centres consists of five scientific institutes in the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, Hungary and Sweden and deals with language promotion and exchange of best-practices and new initiatives. The main emphasis is on regions with regional or minority languages, but the network also works on immigrant languages and small state languages. The network is financially supported within the framework of the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP) of the European Union.
On 17 and 18 September Mercator organised ist first annual conference. Circa 40 persons attended the conference, from the Mercator-partners, representatives from the region Fryslân, where the conference took place, and external scholars and practitioners.
The lectures were divided in the following thematic areas: involvement of immigrants in multilingual education, innovative teaching systems – language transmission outside school, Minority Language Education and its challenges, Promotion of language outside the formal education and effect of legislation on language planning.
Most lectures were about examples in various regions (e.g. Wales, Trieste-Italy, border region Germany-Denmark, Ireland, Friesland-Netherlands, Finland, Catalonia-Spain, as well as immigrants in the Netherlands and Welsh as immigrant language in Argentina).
Very interesting was the contribution by professor Helmut Vollmer, of the division of language policy oft he Council of Europe. He presented the newest development in the field of multilingualism in schools: no longer just language as a subject but as cross-cutting element throughout the school.
For the participants of the conference on behalf of the network RML2future it was an interesting opportunity to hear about developments and examples from different regions in Europe, and to come into contact with experts. In many conversations the opportunity was used to present the network, its activities and its aims. The Mercator Network is more aimed at a scientific approach to the subject of multilingualism and can therefore work very well complementary to our – much more practical aligned – network RML2future.
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