You're invited to our next virtual Plurilingual Lab Speaker Series event:
Plurilingual, Decolonial and Digital (PluriDigit) Pedagogy: From Critical Practice to Learner Empowerment
Growing calls for inclusive, plurilingual, and decolonial approaches in language education underscore the urgent need for pedagogies that recognize learners’ full linguistic repertoires while critically addressing the sociopolitical conditions surrounding language use. Yet, pedagogical models that integrate plurilingual, decolonial, and digital orientations remain underexplored. This talk presents findings from an international SSHRC-funded collaborative intervention study conducted in a multilingual program in Brazil, which investigated the implementation and impact of PluriDigit, an approach that foregrounds plurilingualism, decoloniality, and digital learning as mutually reinforcing dimensions of language education.
We first report the perspectives of nine teachers of English, French, Spanish, and Arabic. We examined 1) the extent to which the teachers' identities informed their implementation of PluriDigit, and 2) their understandings of the affordances and challenges of integrating plurilingual and decolonial pedagogies in online environments. We show that teacher engagement in this project led to the development of DARE—Decolonial, Agentive, Relational, and Empowering—a pedagogical model that transformed language teaching by validating plural identities and supporting language learning grounded in local knowledges, which is particularly relevant in Global South contexts and countries with colonial histories.
We then report the perspectives of the language learners. We explored whether learners’ plurilingual and pluricultural identities and competence shifted over time (between the start and end of the language course), and how PluriDigit contributed to learner empowerment. Analyses across multiple data sources revealed a significant shift from monolingual to plurilingual and pluricultural identity orientations, alongside increase in plurilingual and pluricultural competence scores over time. Findings further indicate that PluriDigit facilitated decolonial learning, agency, relationality, and the development of voice in the target language, demonstrating its potential as a digital pedagogy of empowerment.
In this talk, we show DARE as a framework for advancing equitable, critically informed, and digitally mediated plurilingual education in the Global South and beyond.
Language of presentation: English, with examples in other languages
Speakers' bios:
Angelica Galante is an Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Education, a William Dawson Scholar, and the Director of the Plurilingual Lab at McGill University. Her research interests include language use in multilingual spaces, linguistic discrimination, critical pedagogies, and empowerment. Galante’s award-winning research has appeared in several journals such as Applied Linguistics, TESOL Quarterly, System, International Journal of Multilingualism, and International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, among others. She is co-editor, with Enrica Piccardo, of the Routledge Studies in Plurilingualism.
Enrica Piccardo is a Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Education at OISE-University of Toronto. She has extensive international experience in second/foreign language education research, teacher development and teaching of multiple languages. A collaborator with the Council of Europe since 2008 and Co-author of the new edition of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (Council of Europe, 2020), she has coordinated international research projects on language teaching innovation and teacher education in Canada and Europe. She has presented in numerous countries and in different languages (English, French, Italian and German) and has published extensively in multiple languages - scholarly articles, books and publications for teachers. Her research spans language teaching approaches/curricula, multi/plurilingualism, creativity and complexity in language education. She is presently coordinating the SSHRC-funded ‘Advancing Agency in Language Education’ research project. She is co-editor with Angelica Galante of the Routledge Studies in Plurilingualism series.
Faith Marcel is the Coordinator of the TESL Graduate Certificate Program and faculty member in the School of English Language Studies at Niagara College. She holds a PhD in Language and Literacies Education, specializing in Knowledge Media Design, from OISE, the University of Toronto. With over 25 years of experience in language education, her research explores how educational technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Extended Realities (XR), and other digital tools, can enhance engagement, support inclusive pedagogy, and strengthen meaningful classroom interaction. Dr. Marcel serves as Lead for the Educational Technology Stream at Niagara College’s Centre for Research in Education and member of the Accreditation Standards Committee for TESL Ontario. Dr. Marcel has published in peer-reviewed journals, contributed to SSHRC-funded projects, taught and delivered training in Canada and internationally, and her work reflects a commitment to advancing language education through innovative, technology-enhanced approaches that strengthen collaboration, inclusivity and learner empowerment.
Lana Zeaiter holds a PhD in Educational Studies from McGill University, where her research explored technology-mediated plurilingual pedagogy in language teacher education. Dr. Zeaiter currently works as a Learning Experience Designer (LXD) and Learning Consultant, drawing on her academic training to design inclusive, innovative, and engaging learning experiences. She is also a sessional lecturer in teacher education programs at two leading universities in Quebec.
John Wayne dela Cruz is a Filipino-Canadian critical applied sociolinguist. He recently completed his PhD in Educational Studies – Language Acquisition at McGill University. As a racialized plurilingual immigrant himself, Dr. dela Cruz's research examines the plurilingual identity, practices, and ideologies of immigrant additional language users in officially mono/bilingual settings in Canada. He has taught ESL at primary, secondary, and post-secondary contexts, and more recently, he has been teaching courses in Bachelor of Education and Master’s programs for TESL and French language education at various Canadian universities.
When: January 29, 2026 (Thursday)
Time: 12pm-1:30pm (EST, Montreal)
Mode of delivery: synchronous via Zoom
Registration required. Please click here.
This is a public event and all are welcome. This Speaker Series is sponsored by Concordia University's Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, and co-organized by the BILD Research Group and McGill's Department of Integrated Studies in Education (DISE).
A recording will be made available on the Plurilingual Lab YouTube channel.
