Event overview
Professor Deirdre Martin: Language and learning in contexts of disability and multilingualism
In this seminar I present some key interests that drive my research and teaching: language and learning in contexts of disability and multilingualism. This area of research has a heightened importance now, as population movements bring increasing linguistic diversity – a diversity of diversities, “superdiversity”, as Vertovic names the phenomenon.
Over the last two decades rigorous interrogation and explication of Vygotsky’s original ideas has driven post–Vygotskian understandings in language pedagogy. Key areas of work have been in second language learning, and to lesser extent in language and learning disabilities, and in both re-conceptualising the cognitive and emotive in learning.
This approach to language learning takes a critical turn; that is, working with methodologies that afford visibility of participants’ meaning-making in their (language) learning.
The application of these ideas has informed my own research and the research of doctoral students who have studied with me, with particular applications to multilingual contexts. I will draw on some of their studies.
Professor Deirdre Martin Short Bio:
I have been in touch with, and involved with disability since her earliest childhood. As a speech and language therapist my first posts in employment involved me in becoming bilingual and working in multilingual contexts. This involvement in disability and multilingualism has shaped my professional life and informed my research and academic interests. I have worked mostly in educational settings and drawn on learning theories that interpret teaching/therapy and learning in multilingual contexts. For the last two decades I have worked in higher education and been able to draw on the rich seam of study and research on learning theories and pedagogy, in contexts of multilingualism and disability.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 16 Oct 2014 | 5:30pm - 7:00pm |
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