CALL FOR PAPERS / Special Issue on Teaching and Learning Resources for Linguistic Minorities in Europe
This special issue of the Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe (JEMIE) welcomes researchers employing interdisciplinary approaches to contribute empirically grounded articles exploring teaching and learning resources for linguistic minorities across Europe, with a special focus on the national minorities.
The focal point of this special issue is the belief that access to teaching and learning resources is essential for ensuring quality and equitable education in minority languages. Teaching and learning resources, encompassing textbooks, supplementary materials, as well as both digital and printed teacher resources, can facilitate the alignment of curricula, thereby reducing disparities across geographical regions and fostering greater equity among minority language learners.
Teaching and learning resources also serve the purposes of cultural heritage education, identity formation, and community cohesion. Materials document the minorities' lives and this way make communities visible both for the minority members themselves and the majority society. Moreover, materials set standards for language use and cultural canonization.
The term teaching and learning resources (TLR) encompasses a wide array of pedagogical materials utilized for educational or self-directed learning purposes across various contexts, spanning from school textbooks to academic literature and from media texts to online resources. TLR are adaptable for use within formal educational settings as well as beyond the confines of traditional schooling. TLR is typically referred to in different contexts as pedagogical, educational, didactic, or instructional materials, resources, or content. They encompass learners of various ages and levels of language skills.
When referring to linguistic minorities, we include communities of minority, heritage, or second language speakers, whether officially recognized or not by national governments, who have a longstanding presence in the geographic area under consideration. This encompasses national minority languages, regional languages, heritage languages, home languages, and lesser-spoken or taught languages, often acquired as second languages. These communities commonly face challenges related to minority language preservation or revitalization, identity construction, and the transmission of cultural heritage. In addressing these objectives, TLR can play a pivotal role.
While there is a growing body of research on the presentation of minorities in mainstream school textbooks, less is written about the production, functions, uses and circulation of resources that are targeting minorities and addressing minority languages themselves. Therefore, this special issue aims to stimulate scholarly inquiry into the emerging interdisciplinary field of TLR in the context of minority languages, with a special focus on the national minority languages.
The special issue invites researchers from diverse disciplinary fields utilizing qualitative, quantitative, or mixed-methods, as well as critical, evaluative, and practice-based approaches, to investigate TLR. Potential topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Analysis of existing minority-language textbooks and pedagogical materials from linguistic, cultural, and political perspectives
- Sociological structures of minority-language TLR production: materials generated by authorities, civil society organizations, commercial publishers, as well as learner-generated and community-created resources
- Minority-language policies and TLR development
- TLR in language education and learning
- Cultural literacy and heritage considerations in minority-language TLR
- Capacity building among teachers of minority languages
- Perspectives of learners on TLR development
- TLR's role in language revitalization and maintenance efforts
- Community-driven TLR initiatives and collaborative TLR development
- Opportunities and challenges presented by digital technologies, platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), and big data in the context of minority-language TLR
The anticipated publication date for this issue is spring/summer 2025.
Submissions
Please submit a 200-word abstract with 3–4 keywords written in English by 13 September 2024 to submissions@natminforskning.se. Please add a 150-word author bio of all contributors.
The maximum length of full articles will be 8,000–10,000 words. Submitted manuscripts must comply with the journal's guidelines for authors (https://www.ecmi.de/JEMIE/index.php/journal/about/submissions) and will be subject to a double-blind peer review.
Important dates
- September 13, 2024: Deadline for abstracts
- September 23, 2024: Authors notified of acceptance
- December 13, 2024: Deadline for submitted first draft (full papers)
- Spring/summer 2025: Issue will be published
Editors of the special issue
For any inquiries, please contact the guest editors of the special issue:
Maarit Jaakkola (PhD, Associate Professor, University of Gothenburg, Sweden maarit.jaakkola@gu.se)
Boglárka Straszer (PhD, Professor, Dalarna University, Sweden bsr@du.se)