Linguistic diversity in education: Ingrid Gogolin in interview

Why is linguistic diversity important in creating educational equity? How is the migrant experience different across different nations? How does the perception of national identity impact on migrant inclusion? How can research help us better understand and promote educational equity?

These are some of the questions I recently had the pleasure of discussing with Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Ingrid Gogolin from the Department of General, Intercultural and International Comparative Education at Hamburg University. Professor Gogolin is a long-time collaborator with Language on the Move editor Ingrid Piller, and together they head the global Next Generation Literacies network, along with professors Silvia Melo-Pfeifer (Hamburg University) and Yongyan Zheng (Fudan University).

Professor Gogolin was in Sydney to attend the International Symposium of Bilingualism. On the sidelines of a packed and engaging conference, I interviewed her about her globally renowned work in linguistic diversity in education. Over her distinguished career, she has been a passionate, powerful, and systematic advocate for recognizing and managing linguistic diversity in education in the school system.

I first asked Professor Gogolin to introduce her work to the Language on the Move audience and to explain why with all the educational inequalities in the world today, her focus was on linguistic diversity and educational inequality. Her answer will not surprise regular readers, who know about the various ways language matters in educational contexts around the world, from learning Mandarin as a second language to international students in Australian universities.

We then talked about the differences and similarities between Australia and Germany, where we both live and research, in terms of attitudes to migrants and migrant education. Professor Gogolin mentioned one of her articles which had a big influence on my own thinking about language in education (Ellis et al. 2010), and we talked about how much things have changed in Germany since it has become one of the world’s top migrant-receiving countries in the last few decades.

Finally, we talked about the all-important question of research impact. I asked how her research on linguistic diversity and education has been received by the general public and stakeholders, and how she feels about her contribution to teacher education and educating the general public about these issues. This is particularly important at a time when right-wing populism is on the rise around the world.

Reference

Ellis, Elizabeth, Ingrid Gogolin & Michael Clyne. 2010. The Janus face of monolingualism: A comparison of German and Australian language education policies. Current Issues in Language Planning 11(4). 439-460.