Panel discussion

Mara Kyrou is the “Your Language Counts!” coordinator at Stichting Taal naar Keuze in the Netherlands, where they contribute to the project’s pilot implementation as well as its communication and dissemination activities. She is also a doctoral researcher at Universität Hamburg, focusing on linguistic diversity and social participation. Mara Kyrou's research includes how language policies influence the learning experiences of students from refugee and migrant backgrounds and the role of heritage languages in European education systems.

Elisabeth is currently working for the Goethe-Institut Sweden as the project coordinator of “Your Language Counts!”
She also contributed to the project's dissemination activities in Sweden, Germany and online. Furthermore, she edited the YLC newsletter, populated the website with content, set up a networking platform for teachers and school principals, and added teaching materials for everyone to access.

Anne Reath Warren is an Associate Professor in Education with a focus on multilingualism and newcomers' learning, at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. In her PhD, a linguistic ethnographic study, she investigated the development of multilingual literacies through mother tongue instruction and multilingual tutoring in in Sweden and community language schools in Australia. She now works with professional development for mother tongue teachers, tutors and municipalities, to improve learning conditions for multilingual and newcomer students.

Karijn graduated in Italian Language and Literature from the University of Amsterdam, where she also obtained her PhD on the rhythmic structure of language (Metrical Prosody, 1995). Since 1999, she has been conducting several projects on multilingualism, targeted at teachers and pupils in primary and secondary schools: Taaltrotters, SJOES and Alle Talen (Studio Taalwetenschap). She laid the basis of the Defense Language Center (TalenCentrum Defensie at the NLDA) for the Dutch Ministry of Defense, and of the Teachers College of Windesheim University of Applied Sciences. After a 2-year pilot at seven high schools in Amsterdam (Espritscholen), she founded in 2019 Taal naar Keuze, a non-profit foundation organizing online language courses and examination programmes for regular secondary schools, who themselves do not have the teachers and logistics to provide this education to their students. In addition, the foundation guides middle schools or lower secondary schools to introduce multilingualism and targeted language classes.
For contact: info@taalnaarkeuze.nlor www.taalnaarkeuze.nl/contact.

Project Manager of the Erasmus+ project "Your language counts!", Goethe-Institut Stockholm, Sweden 
 
Sabine Brachmann-Bosse is Head of Education Programmes at the Goethe-Institut in the Nordic countries and Project Manager of the Erasmus+ initiative “Your language counts!” Her work focuses on multilingual education, school development and the professional training of language teachers. She has held international positions at Goethe-Institutes in Kenya, Oman, Bulgaria, and Sweden, and is dedicated to strengthening the visibility and value of heritage language education in multilingual classrooms. 

Since 2007 Simeon Oxley has been involved with heritage language education and in-service training of heritage language teachers. He believes heritage language education provides a vital and valuable contribution for many children in schools, but remains peripheral to mainstream education. Learning and sharing spaces for heritage language teachers and indeed other school personnel should be created and cradled to foster better mutual understanding and development for the sake of our young people.

Affiliation: 
Adjunct lecturer in didactics, Uppsala University and heritage language teacher, Uppsala municipality, coordinator of the implementation phase in “Your Language Counts!”
 

Dr. Tatjana Atanasoska is a professor at the University of Education Upper Austria, focusing on Multilingualism (in School) and German as a Second Language. Her research focuses on heritage language education and heritage language teachers, school systems with regard to multilingualism and the role of reflective competences for teachers in multilingual classrooms. Furthermore, she looks at the (disruptive) role of AI in the field of education.

Institute for German as a Second and Foreign Language
Faculty of Humanities
University of Duisburg-Essen

Head of Research Group “Multilingualism and Social Inclusion”
Deputy Chair of Institute

Dr. Tobias Schroedler is Junior Professor of Multilingualism and Social Inclusion at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, and head of the research group “Multilingualism and Social Inclusion”. He holds an M.Phil. (2011) and Ph.D. (2016) in Applied Linguistics from Trinity College Dublin (Ireland). Before his current role, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hamburg (Germany) and has been visiting scholar at Macquarie University Sydney (Australia), as well as the universities of Stellenbosch and Pretoria (South Africa). He has given guest lectures at various universities. His research addresses multilingualism in education, multilingual pedagogies, institutional multilingualism, language use in the labor market, and language ideologies, including the prestige and value assigned to languages. He currently leads five funded research projects on international comparisons of heritage languages in education, on using multilingual repertoires in the workplace, and on teacher professionalization for multilingual learning contexts.

Ahmad Alhamad has obtained a BA in Arabic Language and Literature from the University of Aleppo in Syria, and a Master's degree in Professional Teaching Methods from Ajman University in the United Arab Emirates.
Alhamad has worked for 13 years teaching Arabic to native and non-native speakers at international schools such as the German International School in Sharjah and the International School of Choueifat in Dubai.
He believes that the mother tongue is very important because it provides a sense of reassurance and psychological comfort for learners, gives them the opportunity to express themselves clearly, and helps them understand and comprehend the laws, customs, and traditions of the new societies they have moved to.

Camilla Hollmén is Deputy Manager at the Unit for Multilingualism in Uppsala Municipality, Sweden. With a master’s degree in leadership and two decades of experience in compulsory school education, she has spent the past 15 years in leadership roles focused on inclusive and multilingual learning environments.

Jeff MacSwan is Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Education at the University of Maryland. His research focuses on the linguistic study of bilingualism and codeswitching (or language alternation), and its implications for theories about the role of language in educational settings for multilingual students.  He is the editor of the International Multilingual Research Journal, and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and of the National Education Policy Center.

Larissa Aksinovits is the chair of the Association of Native Language Teachers of Finland, a speaker and teachers’ trainer. She has almost 20 years of experience of working as a teacher in two countries with one of the best schooling systems in the world - Estonia and Finland. Originally coming from Estonia, she has an experience of being an immigrant teacher in Finland and starting her career from scratch in a new country. In Finland she works as a home/heritage language teacher (Estonian, Russian).
Larissa has received a BA degree in Psychology and master degrees in Estonian as a Second Language, English Language and Literature from the University of Tartu, Estonia. In addition to that she has accomplished a re-qualification program for teachers in Russian Language and Literature in the University of Helsinki.
Currently Aksinovits is a PhD student in Tallinn University, Estonia.
Panel discussion: caregiver’s role and point of view on HL teaching

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Dr. Tanya Kaya is an adjunct lecturer  in the field of
German as a second and foreign language
at the Institute for Subject-Oriented Language Education and Multilingualism (IfSM)