Early Childhood and Digital Media at Home: Some Analysis from a European Comparative Project
    
In this session I will present a (re)analysis of data obtained in a comparative European study focused on the digital practices of children between 0-3 years of age. In the session I will explain the adaptations of the “A Day in the Life” methodology (Gillen et al; 2007)  based on videotaping of the daily life of a child between 0-3 years for an almost full day. I will present an ongoing analysis focused on the experiences and digital practices of the two Spanish cases that we are doing in order to develop a conceptualization of digital practices of early childhood in the domestic space that starts from the notion of assembly (Farías, 2010) developed from city ​​studies and actor-network theory. This approach will serve to problematize some of  assumptions regarding the relationships between digital media / practices, home and childhood and youth.
    
Dr. David Poveda is a University Professor at the Autonomous University of Madrid. He has a background in Psychology, Education and Anthropology and extensive research experience in linguistic ethnography. His research interests focus on (1) the linguistic and semiotic practices of childhood and youth in a variety of socio-educational contexts; (2) understanding a diversity of social conditions (e.g. cultural, institutional, ethnic, gender, social class, family type, geographic, etc.) that shape the development, education and generation of inequalities in contemporary childhood / youth. He also has a cross-cutting interest on different issues related to qualitative, ethnographic and participatory research methodologies.

Classroom Interactions: Which, How, and Why?

Research in the teaching of additional languages ​​defends the importance of interaction but it must be remembered that this concept is not limited to the production of oral discourse between learners in diverse settings. The concept of interaction can be applied to oral and written practices and also to other communicative situations that take place within the classroom, communication being understood in its broadest sense. In this talk we propose to reflect on different modes of interaction aimed at promoting the autonomy of learners.

Dr. Maria Dolors Cañada is a full professor at the Department of Translation and Language Sciences at UPF. She holds a PhD in French Philology from the UAB and a MA  in Education and ICT from the UOC. She belongs to the GR@EL Research Group which is recognized and funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya. Her research focuses on the processes of learning additional languages, in particular those that promote the autonomy of learners. She is the co-author of French teaching manuals C'est la vie! y C'est à decir! published by Santillana and Clé International.

A Didactic Engineering Project Articulating Grammar and Text: Challenges and Perspectives

As part of this conference, I will present a research project whose major goal is the construction of didactic engineering that aims to articulate the teaching of grammar and texts. I will first explain the architecture of the project, its theoretical and methodological bases, as well as the contextual reasons for its elaboration. I will then focus more specifically on the design phase of teaching sequences, illustrating the current issues of language teaching: a) honoring two objectives simultaneously, building a representation of language as a system integral to the students. , and developing useful skills for the production and comprehension of texts; b) developing teaching devices that simultaneously meet criteria of usefulness, usability and acceptability; c) clarifying the linguistic status of the grammatical knowledge taught.

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Read the summary in French (OV)

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Dr. Ecaterina Bulea Bronckart is a professor of French didactics and language science at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at the University of Geneva, where she co-leads a teaching research team. His work mainly covers three areas: the teaching of French, with a particular emphasis on the teaching of grammar and on the articulations between grammar and textuality; the general theories of language, re-examining in this sense especially the theory of the sign by Ferdinand de Saussure; and the role of language in the process of psychological development and in the professional development of teachers.

Researching the Impact of Language Teacher Professional Development

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The key role in education of teacher quality has been repeatedly emphasized globally in recent years. Improving teacher quality is acknowledged as a key element in enhancing student learning and consequently educational systems and organisations around the world are investing heavily in the professional development of their teaching staff. Much of my work in recent years has focused on evaluating initiatives which aim to improve teacher competence and in this talk I will draw on this experience to (a) discuss some principles which should guide research into the impact of teacher professional development and (b) illustrate these principles with reference to some recent projects I have worked on.

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Dr. Simon Borg has been involved in education for over 30 years, working as a teacher, teacher educator, lecturer and researcher in a range of international contexts. After 15 years at the University of Leeds, he now works primarily as an educational consultant, with a focus on designing, implementing and evaluating teacher professional development policies and programmes. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. Simon is recognised for his academic work on teacher education and development and has published over 100 books, chapters and articles. Details of his work are available at http://simon-borg.co.uk/.

The Study of Multilingual Practices in Schools

The school is a sociolinguistic observatory in the sense that it brings together, simultaneously and in one space, policies and discourses on language teaching and language practices. Based on our experiences of collaborative research in schools and, in particular, drawing from research on didactic interventions that GREIP has carried out, I will focus this presentation on the potential of Conversational Analysis (CA) as a tool for analyzing naturally occuring multilingual collected in school spaces. Based on this, I will  review and discuss some tools and concepts for analyzing multilingual interactions that may be useful for students who are beginning their research or have already undertaken research in this field.

Dr. Luci Nussbaum is a former professor at the Department of Teaching of Language and Literature at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She was a founding member and principal investigator of the GREIP (Research Centre for Teaching & Plurilingual Interaction) research team until 2014. She specializes in the study of verbal interaction in situations of multilingualism and of learning second and foreign languages ​​from the perspectives of interactional sociolinguistics and conversation analysis.

How to Write a Successful Thesis

In this talk I stress that it is vital to consider the examiners' perspectives when writing a thesis. We look at how to structure and signpost the thesis so examiners can find what they are looking for and evaluate the study effectively. We look in detail at the contents of each component of the thesis, and how to make the components cohere to support the central argument. Examples are provided of successful and unsuccessful strategies. 

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Dr. Paul Seedhouse is Professor of Educational and Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University, UK. He has published 9 books and over 60 articles and book chapters in the area of applied linguistics and language teaching. Working with colleagues in Computing Science over 10 years, he has had 3 grants to build kitchens which use digital technology to teach users languages and cuisines simultaneously. The French Digital Kitchen project won the European Language Label Prize in 2012 and the Linguacuisine app is now available on https://linguacuisine.com/ 

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Metalinguistic activity and the learning of grammar


Research on collaborative writing has revealed the intense metalinguistic activity that students carry out in these learning situations. However, it has also shown the difficulties they experience when they do not have enough explicit grammatical knowledge for reflection on the language in order to be efficient. On the other hand, traditional teaching and formal grammatical models have not been shown to be useful for managing the problems that writing presents. The challenge that arises is to think about the characteristics of a grammar for teaching that attends to the formal, semantic and pragmatic aspects of the language so that it can be an instrument for reflection on the language in use, thus overcoming the dichotomy between implicit grammar and explicit grammar.



Dr. Anna Camps is an Honorary Professor of Language Teaching. She was founder and main researcher of the GREAL group (Grup de Receca sobre l’Ensenyament i Aprenentage de Llengües) of the UAB. She has focused her research on the teaching of writing and grammar from a sociocultural approach. Her latest works have focused on the study of metalinguistic activity in collaborative writing processes and on the importance of interaction in learning grammar, overcoming the dichotomy between implicit and explicit grammar.