McGill University, Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE)
Decolonial Mother Tongue-Based Language Education: Regional Perspectives
7 November, 2025
Keynote Presentation 1
🗓️ 7 November 2025
🕙 10:30–11:00 A.M. Montreal Time (EST / UTC−5)
🕓 4:30–5:00 P.M. Madrid Time (CET / UTC+1)
🕖 7:00–7:30 P.M. Tehran Time (IRST / UTC+3:30)
💻 Format: Online via Zoom
Dr. Mònica Pereña
Catalan Ministry of Education
Challenges and Successes of Multilingual Education in Catalonia
Abstract: The current Catalan plurilingual education model has been developed using the knowledge and experience gained over the past 40 years, since Catalan became the language of the education system in Catalonia up to the present day when information and knowledge is produced and distributed in different languages. The shift from a sociolinguistic reality reflecting a population that basically spoke in either Catalan or Spanish, to a situation in which over two hundred different languages are present in today's schools has impacted deeply in our schools. One of the major challenges to be addressed is still to position Catalan as the main communicative language of the whole education system, ensuring that all students are proficient and can use it. At the same time, the goal is to promote inclusive, plurilingual and intercultural approaches that build relationships between different cultures and between the first language and other languages to guarantee equal opportunities for all students and, consequently, social cohesion. After defining the fundamental characteristics and objectives of this model and the strategic, methodological, didactic and organizational bases to implement it we will analyze the obstacles such as demographic factors; the limited social presence of Catalan in mass media, justice, cultural and leisure offer, health and commercial fields and legal status. We will see how school has a crucial role in the surviving of the Catalan language, being not only a tool for learning it but for protecting it by facilitating a space where the language can be used and where it can resist the pressure of the majority language.
About the speaker: Mònica Pereña has a Degree in Catalan Philology at the University of Barcelona and a Diploma of French Studies at the University of Toulouse-Le Mirail, France. She followed a Doctoral program in "Contemporary Catalan Literature: From theory to practice" at the University of Barcelona and the Research Program "The Language, Equity, and Educational Policy (LEEP)" at the School of Education at Stanford University. She has an Executive Master in Public Administration from ESADE Business School. She started her professional career as a teacher. Currently, she is responsible of International Evaluations at the Institute for Educational Evaluation in Catalonia. Previously, as Deputy Director of Language and Multilingualism at the Ministry of Education of Catalonia she ran the linguistic policy of the Catalan education system and she developed linguistic programs oriented to improve teachers’ performance, on the methodological field and in school organization, and had responsibilities on in-service teacher training. She was also responsible of the implementation of international programs. Since 2016, she is president of Linguapax, an international organization with UNESCO consultative status dedicated to the assessment, protection, and preservation of the world's linguistic diversity.
Keynote Presentation 2
🗓️ 7 November 2025
🕥 11:00–11:30 A.M. Montreal Time (EST / UTC−5)
🕠 5:00–5:30 P.M. Madrid Time (CET / UTC+1)
🕗 7:30–8:00 P.M. Tehran Time (IRST / UTC+3:30)
💻 Format: Online via Zoom
Dr. Ane Ortega-Etcheverry
Bilbao’s Begoñako Andra Mari Teacher Training University College (BAM)
Multilingual Education with a Minoritized Language: Challenges and Successes of the Basque Education System
Abstract: The creation of the Basque education system in the 1980s must be understood within the context of the political shift in Spain from dictatorship to democracy. As a consequence, the Basque Country became an autonomous community with devolved powers in education, which enabled the launch of Basque-medium education. In the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC), parents can choose the linguistic model for their children (Basque-medium, Spanish-medium, or bilingual). Thanks to parental support, today more than 95% of students in compulsory education (up to 16 years old) are enrolled in Basque-medium or bilingual education. This new education system required deep reflection and innovation in organizing language learning, as well as in how to teach curricular content in a minoritized language –one that is a second language (L2) for at least half the children. Additionally, the system had to guarantee a good level of English as a third language (L3), which is also part of the curriculum from Primary school onward. In this presentation, I will first describe the organizational and pedagogical decisions that were made, in order to understand the evolution and current state of Basque education. Secondly, I will discuss the lessons learned by looking at the successes as well as the challenges of a trilingual system which has the minoritized language as the main language of instruction. Finally, I will pose the question of how multilingual education can serve as a cornerstone for countries and communities whose language is not a hegemonic or officially recognized one, as well as the kind of educational design that can help achieve the desired political and social goals.
About the speaker: Ane Ortega-Etcheverry (PhD in Sociolinguistics-London), has worked until very recently as a lecturer in the Department of Language and Literature Education of Bilbao’s Begoñako Andra Mari Teacher Training University College (BAM), in the field of multilingual education in minority language contexts. She is a member of the University of the Basque Country ELEBILAB and HIJE research teams working on Basque Language Acquisition, Education, and Use. She is also a member of the UNESCO Chair on World Language Heritage of the University of the Basque Country, and an active member of Garabide Elkartea, a Basque NGO working on linguistic cooperation with other indigenous communities involved in the revitalization of their languages. In this capacity she has mainly worked with the Nasa people of Colombia but has also done some work with other indigenous communities in South America, with the Amazigh in Argelia, and the Kurdish in Turkey. Her prime research area for the past 20 years has been in Basque sociolinguistics, primarily in relation to new speakers of Basque.
Question & Answer Period – 30 Minutes
Keynote Presentation 3
🗓️ 7 November 2025
🕦 12:00–12:30 P.M. Montreal Time (EST / UTC−5)
🕕 6:00–6:30 P.M. Madrid Time (CET / UTC+1)
🕘 8:30–9:00 P.M. Tehran Time (IRST / UTC+3:30)
💻 Format: Online via Zoom
Dr. Mama Adobea Nii-Owoo
McGill University
Remembering and Rebuilding Linguistic Authority for Multilingual Futures: Challenges and Successes of Multilingual Education in Africa
Abstract: African educational systems are currently at an exciting yet complex juncture in history. As literacy frameworks continue to evolve, contemporary educational systems must prioritize and cultivate multilingual futures. Cultivating multilingual futures requires a critical examination of language planning and policy’s control of teachers’ multiliteracy practices linked to cultivating versus suppressing multilingual authority in education from colonial to decolonial eras. In engaging with Kalan’s question, Who is Afraid of Multilingual Education?, this presentation moves beyond the tendency to frame Southern policyscapes through the fear and uncertainty of managing multilingualism. It expands on decolonial calls for multilingual education as a project of remembering—a critical pedagogical practice that resists fear-based narratives. Rather than approaching linguistic diversity solely through discussions of inequality and access, this perspective highlights multilingual education as a creative and necessary challenge, essential for serving multilingual learners, who are the majority rather than minority (McKinney & Guzula, 2024). Through two examples, focusing on translanguaging for learning within Ghanaian and South African policy contexts, I will explore evidence-based research and praxis representing challenges and successes of multilingual education. My multimodal study in Ghana mirrors this challenge, where findings reveal that teachers’ reluctance to employ translanguaging derives from a complex interplay between policy’s cultivation and suppression of multilingual authority in both English-medium schooling and mother tongue-based bilingual education discourses. Classroom observations and interviews with teachers illustrate how educators and learners are pressured to disengage from their natural multilingual practices—effectively erasing the lived realities of language policy within a multilingual society. The second case study highlights one of the successes in multilingual education in South Africa’s Western Cape, through the work of the Bua-Lit Collective (McKinney & Guzula, 2024). Bua-Lit is a research collective advancing translanguaging pedagogy, positioning it as a fundamental dimension of multilingual authority within a collaboratively constructed curriculum aligned with multilingual policy frameworks. The Bua-Lit curriculum introduces educators to essential beliefs, attitudes, resources, and strategies pertinent to multilingual education across diverse subject areas and age groups (McKinney & Guzula, 2024). This initiative challenges prevalent narratives that frame multilingualism as a problem requiring resolution, instead reframing linguistic diversity as a natural social phenomenon that demands conscious and critical engagement from educators. Together, these cases illustrate that translanguaging represents not only a form of plurilingual pedagogy but a decolonial social practice that fosters remembering and the reconstruction of multilingual authority. Both African examples interrogate this paradox, where multilingualism, while deeply woven into Ghana and South Africa’s historical and sociocultural fabric, is resisted within formal education, exposing structural tensions between policy and practice. I suggest that the question of who is afraid or fearless must be linked to frameworks of authority in multilingual education as a decolonial project of remembering in southern contexts (Makoni & Severo, 2016; Tupas, 2021) allowing teachers, the who in this case to reorient the interpretive lenses of policy via Global South ontological and epistemological frameworks of languaging. I will conclude my presentation by introducing a tool developed to signal multilingual authority—one that holds potential for adaptation in teacher education courses, further reinforcing the necessity of cultivating multilingual expertise in pedagogical spaces.
About the speaker: Mama Adobea Nii-Owoo is an applied linguist specializing in policies and practices around multilingual education, teacher education and comparative international and development education. Her work addresses the complexities and challenges in teaching literacy and language to multilingual learners speaking and writing in both English and African languages. Her scholarship includes the co-authored book, Centering Multilingual Learners and Countering Raciolinguistic Ideologies in Teacher Education: Principles, Policies and Practices (Multilingual Matters), a chapter in the Handbook of Language and the Global South, and articles in peer-reviewed journals such as TESL Canada, OLBI Journal, and the International Journal of Qualitative Methods. Mama researches across multiple modalities, and her research is also featured in the documentary film, No Vernacular!, which explores African multilingualism and language policy in Ghana. Her research has won multiple awards, including UofT’s Adel Sedra Award, TIRF’s Russell N. Campbell Prize, the QES Advanced Scholarship and the CIESC's Michel Laferriere award for doctoral research. She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at McGill University DISE . Mama is also the founder of the Afroliteracies Foundation. a Ghana-based think-tank and accelerator for languages in education.
Keynote Presentation 4
🗓️ 7 November 2025
🕛 12:30–1:00 P.M. Montreal Time (EST / UTC−5)
🕖 6:30–7:00 P.M. Madrid Time (CET / UTC+1)
🕤 9:00–9:30 P.M. Tehran Time (IRST / UTC+3:30)
💻 Format: Online via Zoom
Dr. Prem Phyak
Teachers College, Columbia University, USA
From Colonialism to Neoliberal Nationalism: Linguistic Double Divide, Ideological Complexity and the Future of Multilingual Education in South Asia
Abstract: South Asia is one of the most linguistically and culturally diverse regions in the world. Yet, the national language policies in the region continue to perpetuate language hierarchies historically shaped by colonialism, both external and internal, and modern nationalism. The region has experienced political conflicts due to the denial of linguistic and cultural rights of Indigenous/tribal and ethnic minorities. In this talk, I will discuss the ideological complexity shaping language policy in education in the region, with a focus on how the promises of language rights through multilingual education are rarely enacted in education. Building on ‘coloniality’ (Quijano, 2007) and ‘neoliberal nationalism’ (Harmes, 2011), I analyze how South Asian countries continue to reinforce ‘linguistic double divide’ (Mohanty, 2010) in their language policies that fail to create spaces for sustainable multilingualism in education. Using national education policy documents, including mother tongue-based multilingual education, I critically examine the construction of deficit ideology and linguistic purism in national policy discourses and practices and explain how these ideologies support linguistic boundaries to displace Indigenous languages from schools. I will conclude the talk by proposing the notion of multilingual futurism as a decolonial approach that embraces Indigenous reparation and epistemologies for equitable multilingual education.
About the speaker: Dr. Prem Phyak is Associate Professor of language, society, and education at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. His research areas include language policy, multilingual education, translanguaging, language activism, Indigenous language reclamation and decoloniality and social justice in education. Dr. Phyak is associate editor of Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education and serves several journals as an editorial member. He has co-authored a book Engaged Language Policy and Practices and co-edited a volume Multilingual Education in South Asia: At the Intersection of Policy and Practice and published several articles in journals such as Language Policy, The Modern Language Journal, Language in Society, Current Issues in Language Planning, Multilingual, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, and Critical Inquiry in Language Studies.
Question & Answer Period – 30 Minutes
