A patchwork for the identity of the learner in diversity

The patchwork conference (SIG 10 & 21) organised by the European association of early research in education (EARLI), discussed research related to learning and misunderstanding diversities. The challenges of the conference dealt with nuances of processes taking place in social interaction, relationship between what happens in the schools and out of the school, articulation between different sides of learning, diversity and interaction in social spaces, and negotiation and understanding the meaning construction. The meeting also aimed at bringing together discussions on the reconstruction of the educational system with the inclusion of diverse identities and cultures. As the symbol of the conference, the patchwork was understood as actively bringing together different research domains in learning and education.
Among the interesting researches that were presented during the conference, Mrs Tinde KovaČ CeroviĆ presented her own experience as a bridge council between research in education and educational policies. She talked about the challenges faced by researchers in making research results applicable because of the misunderstandings that occur between research data and researchers on the one side and policymakers on the other side. In the organisation of the learning niche, researchers and policymakers should world hand in hand. Therefore, there is a need of meaning-making and joint vision and mutual support between researchers and education policymakers for research results to be applied properly. Her ongoing works calls for a search for an attempt to bring together these two worlds. In her opinion, researchers should be consistent of how to package research results for it to be understandable by policymakers, and they should be careful with the way meaning is mediated through media.
Ed Elbers discussed the relevance of discussions related to minority in school. He questioned why researchers do neglect diversity and thinks that one of the first reasons is the low number of the career opportunities related to diversity researchers. In his opinion, researches results should awake policymakers’ awareness about the diverse communities we are living in nowadays and the challenges that this situation means for education and learning and teaching. The context of learning and teaching should be considered and education should not minimise the importance of looking at specific groups, rather how children circumstances influence their learning development should be focused on. Instead of preferring general theories of learning and teaching in the research community, as it is the case in many research domains, the tools we use in teaching and learning should be included in research and theories should consider the practical and symbolic contexts of children for learning and development. The professor encourages a parent-teacher talk for overcoming conflicts and encouraging the expression of misunderstanding between members of the groups.
Jaan Valsiner questioned the way we look at the other and calls for an objective instead of a moralistic stance. He discusses the place of development in education and asserts that it takes place in time and evolves transformation; it neither happens at the beginning nor at the end state, rather at a transition state where there is no longer A but not yet B. Development happens at the border of what it is not yet and what it could be. Valsiner’s theory on the state of development is very interesting because it highlight another perspective of the zone of proximal development (ZPD). If “all development takes place in the heterogenic space” as Valsiner discussed it, then the learning of Luxembourgish should not be investigated at the beginning state of learning nor at the state where learners are already independent speakers, rather at the state in-between learners struggle with the TL and learners’ interlanguage can be analysed.
My own presentation on naturally occurring interaction in the everyday lives of multilingual adults learning Luxembourgish was discussed and improved with comments and critics related to the analysis of data…