Visiting International Professor, Kathleen Heugh, is giving a public lecture on Thursday entitled "100 Years of Research on Multilingualism and Education in Africa: Implications for South African Universities".
Visiting International Professor, Kathleen Heugh, is giving a public lecture on Thursday entitled "100 Years of Research on Multilingualism and Education in Africa: Implications for South African Universities".
In the paper she explores various studies into the role of home language /mother tongue, bilingual and multilingual education in relation to student achievement.
As she says in her abstract, "After 100 years of research on different kinds of bi/multilingual education we realise that language cannot be separated from the historical, cultural and epistemological contexts in which learning takes place …We also see recognition of the value of expertise and knowledge of local communities’ languages and epistemologies alongside international and ‘global citizenship’ education".
It is an essential lecture for anyone involved in education in Grahamstown – or anyone simply interested in how best we can educate our children and young people.
Kathleen Heugh is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of South Australia. She is also Extraordinary Associate Professor of Linguistics, University of the Western Cape; Honorary Research Fellow at the Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa; and currently Distinguished Visiting Professor at Rhodes University, South Africa.
She has designed and taught MA and Post-graduate Diploma programs and courses on language policy and planning, bilingual and multilingual education and language acquisition at the Universities of Cape Town and Antwerp.
She played a leading role in post-apartheid language policy development (1987-2001) and was appointed to the first Pan South African Language Board (1996-2001).
She has been a chief investigator and leader of large-scale evaluation and assessment studies on languages and literacy education in sub-Saharan Africa for UNDP, UNESCO, international development agencies and governments.
She has published widely on this research, and she is the co-founder (with Professor Christopher Stroud, Stockholm & Western Cape) of the Southern Multilingualisms and Diversities Consortium (SMDC).
The SMDC includes researchers and research organisations in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and Latin & North America who are concerned with how multilingual knowledges, practices and research expertise in 'southern' contexts contribute to global understandings of linguistic diversity.
The lecture will take place 1pm at Eden Grove Blue, Thursday 17 September.
