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Standard Language Education

Date of Approval:	2.5.2006
Website (URL):	(n/a)

Convener(s)

Description

The aims of the network are to promote research, development and exchange of knowledge and information as well as collaboration in the field of Standard Language Education/Mother Tongue Education. The field deals with the teaching and/or learning within an educational system of the so-called mother tongue, be it a standard language of a nation state that statutorily accepts it as such, the language of education or the language of primary socialisation (a child's first own and/or home language). It is concerned with learners' curricular enculturation to language, literature and culture, and focuses on the disciplinary teaching and/or learning of signs, texts, utterances and their contexts, in particular reading, speaking, writing and listening. Although research may tend to foreground language, the interdisciplinary and complex character of the field opens for collaboration across disciplines.

Publications

Wolfgang Herrlitz, Sigmund Ongstad and Piet-Hein van de Ven (Eds.): Research on MTE in a Comparative International Perspective. Theoretical and methodological issues. Amsterdam/New York, N.Y. (Utrecht Studies in Language and Communication). Forthcoming 2007.

Contributions by StLE members in: Towards a common European framework of reference for language(s) of school education. Proceeding of an international conference organised by the Council of Europe and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, April 27-29.2006. Forthcoming 2007.

Tri-Annual Report

Several network members took part in a Nordic one day conference in Växjö, Sweden, November 9, 2005, arranged by the network for Swedish with a Didactic Direction (SmDI). The theme of the conference was the different profiles of the Nordic mother tongue disciplines, and the goal was to establish a platform for future work in the fields of Nordic mother tongue education and research. At the conference members of StLE, Prof. Jon Smidt, Norway, and Associate prof. Ellen Krogh, Denmark, gave presentations.
In 2006 initiatives have been taken towards forming a common nordic research network on StLE/mother tongue education in the nordic countries. This will contribute to strengthening the StLE field of research.

In April 2006 the European Council, Language Policy Division, Strasbourg, France, and the Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland organised the international conference "Towards a Common European Framework of Reference for Languages of School Education" in Kraków, Poland. The conference was part of a project aiming at examining the feasibility of producing a common European framework of reference for languages of school education. The convenors of StLE both presented papers at the conference, and an invitation to become members of the network was distributed. Several participants at the Kraków conference have later announced their intentions to take part in the StLE ReN activities in Essen 2008.

IMEN, The International Mother Tongue Education Network, a network the StLE network cooperates with, hosted two sessions at the Kraków conference. In February 2007 a think tank seminar was held at Randsvangen Hotel near Oslo at which several research groups were formed, some of these focusing on research projects in connection with the European Council research programme. At the seminar the ReN plans for Essen 2008 were presented. There is some overlap between IMEN and StLE: the leader of the IMEN board is former MTE convener, prof. Sigmund Ongstad, Norway, and one of the present StLE convenors, Dr. Ellen Krogh, is member of the IMEN board. This means that IMEN activities reach into StLE and to a high degree will point forward to AILA’s "Essen" conference in 2008.

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Last Updated: 2008-07-09