Stellenbosch University
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Auxin with Prof Mbulungeni Madiba
Author: CTL/SOL
Published: 13/05/2020

​​Title of presentation:  Implementing multilingualism in South African universities: dilemmas and innovations

Title and name of presenterProf Mbulungeni Madiba, Dean:  Faculty of Education

Short biography of presenter:  Prof Mbulungeni Madiba is Dean of the Faculty of Education at SU since September 2019. He has served as the director of the Multilingual Education Project (MEP) in the Centre for Higher Education Development (CHED) at UCT. He has been deputy dean and acting dean of the CHED a number of times, chaired UCT's Senate Language Committee and served on the UCT Council. Prof Madiba has 30 years' of teaching experience and a wealth of experience in leadership and management.  A full professor of Multilingual Education, Prof Madiba holds a DLitt et Phil (Linguistics) degree from the University of South Africa (Unisa). He has also received research fellowships and study awards from a number of higher education institutions abroad, including the universities of Cologne, London (Oppenheimer fellow), Birmingham and Harvard (Mandela fellow). As an established researcher with a C-rating from the National Research Foundation, his main research interests are language planning and policy, with a special focus on multilingual education.​

Blurb: Twenty-six years into democracy, South African universities are still faced with many dilemmas in implementing multilingualism in their teaching and learning programmes (SAHRC Report, 2014). These dilemmas are of theoretical/ideological, methodological and practical nature. Some of these dilemmas have been widely exposed by the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic.  Most universities are just not equipped to provide multilingual learning and teaching support materials to students learning remotely from home.  The aim of this presentation is to discuss these dilemmas and show innovative strategies that have/ can be used to address them in South African universities. Translanguaging is proposed as an innovative pedagogic strategy to address language policy implementation challenges identified in this presentation. It will be argued that translanguaging enables multilingual students to use their full linguistic repertoires in learning and also bridges the gap between university language policies and pedagogical practices.

Date and time: 26 May 2020, 12:45 – 13:45
Venue: MS Teams 


Articles: 
  1. Garcia, O. and Kleyn, T. 2016. Translanguaging with multilingual students: Learning from Classroom moments. New York: Routledge

  2. Madiba, M. 2018. The Multilingual University. In A. Creese and A. Blackledge (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Language and Superdiversity. London: Routledge (pp.504-517)​ The multilingual university.pdf

For more information and for RSVP contact Juanita Layman
jlayman@sun.ac.za
021 808 3717

If you are no longer able to attend the AUXIN, we request that you please CANCEL your registration at least 24 hours before the time, by contacting Ms Layman (contact details above). There are certain financial costs incurred by the CTL for each AUXIN, and the request is to minimise financial implications.

A podcast will be available on the CTL website after the session: www.sun.ac.za/ctl