Educational capacity-building for linguistic inclusion and mobility

Schools promote mobility by providing access to national languages and languages of wider communication, to knowledge and skills valued in the national and European economies, and to multicultural or cosmopolitan forms of identity. Ironically, however, mobility now poses unprecedented challenges for national school systems in EU member states, which were not designed to respond to the educational needs of large numbers of minority, migrant and refugee families speaking many different languages. Improving the trade-off between mobility and inclusion in these school systems implies improving access, participation and outcomes for these socially excluded populations. Although national education policies have a role to play in achieving this, it is the meso level of organization – school systems, teacher education programs, local and regional government, community associations and so on – where practical solutions need to be developed and implemented. This chapter addresses three important aspects of this meso level of capacity-building for linguistic inclusion in education: the building of local educational partnerships, the education of teachers, and the recognition, validation and assessment of community skills. Rather than focusing on language issues in isolation, the goal is to rethink and adapt well-established inclusion-oriented policy frameworks or initiatives in each of these areas. Overall, the analysis demonstrates that adapting national school systems to the needs of a mobile, multilingual Europe will depend on creative collaboration on the part of policy- and decision-makers at the meso level, as well as teacher trainers, student teachers, teachers, students and families, and community organisations.