Academics from the Department of Early Childhood and Primary Education, forming part of the ECPE Research Group which includes Prof. Josephine Milton, Dr Josephine Deguara, Dr Rosienne Camilleri, Dr Tania Muscat and Dr Charmaine Bonello, participated in the 2025 International Association for Intercultural Education (IAIE) held in Budapest, Hungary, between 10 and 13 June 2025.
The conference was hosted by the Department of English Language Pedagogy, Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in collaboration with IAI). This year’s overarching theme “Currents in Education: Navigating Change in Languages, Cultures and Communities” centred on language learning, multilingualism, translation and intercultural competence in schools.
The ECPE Research Group presented two papers based on research being undertaken by the research project funded by the University of Malta’s Research Excellence Funds (2023-2025), under the Social Sciences and Education category. The project titled, “Addressing Linguistic Diversity in Malta: Teacher Education and Classroom Pedagogy in Early and Primary Education” seeks to offer contextual understanding of how in-service and pre-service educators are responding to linguistic diversity in Maltese early and primary levels.
The first paper “Accommodating linguistic diversity in early childhood and primary education: A systematic review of literature”, was presented Dr Rosienne Camilleri, Dr Charmaine Bonello and Dr Tania Muscat on behalf of the group. This paper reviewed local and international literature on pedagogical approaches and emerging trends in supporting multilingualism in early and primary education.
The second paper, “Multilingual pedagogies in transition: Pre-service educator insights from early and primary settings in Malta” was presented by Prof. Josephine Milton and Dr Josephine Deguara. Drawing on preliminary data indicates the number of languages spoken by children in early and primary Maltese classrooms, the uneven implementation of multilingual strategies, the contextual differences across classrooms and schools, and pre-service educators’ varying perspectives on linguistic diversity.
The ECPE Research Group acknowledges the University of Malta for supporting this research through the Research Excellence Funds Award (2023-2025).
