The ECML project Pluriwell has continued to broaden its reach as it enters its final full academic year, after a summer marked by successful dissemination activities and growing interest in the project and its goal of fostering the plurilingual wellbeing of language teachers.

“The concept of plurilingual wellbeing and the resources we have been creating have clearly been resonating with both teachers and education researchers”, said the project’s communications officer, Karen Aaroe. In the past few months alone, members of the Pluriwell expert team have shared findings and reflections from the project in a number of academic forums, including the prestigious conference of the Canadian Centre for Studies and Research on Bilingualism and Language Planning (CCERBAL) in Ottawa in May as well as the EDiLiC conference on Pluriliteracies in Education in Hamburg in June. Looking ahead, coordinator Caterina Sugranyes has been invited to deliver a keynote address on plurilingual wellbeing at the upcoming Frisian Humanities conference in the Netherlands. A contribution from the Pluriwell team will also be featured at the international conference “Bridging Voices in Plurilingual Education: Policies, Research, and Practices” in Rome in October.

In addition to spreading the word about plurilingual wellbeing more widely among teachers and researchers in Europe and beyond, the project participants have also been deepening their understanding of the concept and looking at practical ways to help teachers boost their plurilingual wellbeing. The Pluriwell teachers have created an impressive library of tools, ranging from activities to be done in a short burst of reflection to longer-term approaches to plurilingual wellbeing. “It was inspiring to see the creativity and the diversity of approaches”, said Sanja Bogojević, who teaches Italian in Montenegro and has been involved in the project for the past year. The expert team has been assessing and compiling the tools. The next step will be to design and develop the final toolkit, which will include a selection of the most representative and broadly useful tools. “We realised that most if not all of the tools are adaptable to different educational contexts and are culturally flexible”, Bogojević observed.

In November, the expert team will meet to finalise the toolkit. “The tools our participants have created are really exciting, and we can’t wait to share them,” said Sugranyes.

Author: Latisha Mary, for the Pluriwell team

• ECML project website “Fostering the plurilingual wellbeing of language teachers” (2024-26) (available in English and French): www.ecml.at/pluriwell