Scholarship

Engagement-led Undergraduate Scholarship: Bringing Multilingual Students and Communities Together

I am currently developing an UG community-engaged learning course in Spanish, which aims to promote active learning strategies within Modern Languages. The course explores community engagement, migration, and diaspora in the UK more broadly, and the Spanish and Latin American communities more specifically, considering different engagement methodologies and approaches in multilingual contexts. The course aims to integrate community-engaged experiences and projects with academic course content, while providing benefit to Scotland’s local communities.

Approach to Student-Centred Active Learning: this is a student and project-centred course, which seeks to work as a model within Hispanic Studies to explore new methods and approaches to language teaching and learning. Students will explore the role and place of community languages within migration and diaspora studies by analysing language policies, educational policies, and studying concepts such as multilingualism and language heritage in the UK, before deciding on their project and reflect on its possible outcomes and challenges, as well as social and ethical implications.

Transforming curricula and assessment: As part of the assessment, students will identify the communities’ linguistic needs and barriers and produce materials and resources in Spanish for the Spanish-speaking communities in Scotland. This is currently a unique active learning approach within the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Glasgow, as students will create tangible and much-needed multilingual resources for the communities. Students will also write a reflective piece about developing their community project, by linking their work to theory and context, including the challenges they faced and the solutions they found.

Students’ Professional & Skills Development: the course includes the exploration of several engagement activities, from arts-based projects to translation exercises, as well as individual reflection and teamwork. Students will work in teams to decide, design and execute a project (as detailed below). The different activities will foster leadership skills, problem solving, organisational skills, and communication skills, including digital skills (such as co-drafting tools, crowd mapping, or visual collaboration platforms). By the end of the course, students will have a better understanding of migration and language policies in the UK, and the many intersectional barriers faced by different migrant communities, while focusing on tangible solutions (e.g. a quick guide about the education system in Scotland in Spanish).

At a later stage, we aim to build partnerships with local community organisations where students will develop further interactions and work-related activities (as from 2023).

Art, Language, Creativity and Dementia

Several studies have shown the importance of creative activities as an effective way to reach out and reconnect with people with different capabilities and at different stages of their life. From music, dance movement therapy to art workshops, there have been several initiatives in the UK working successfully with people with dementia. For instance, Dementia and Imagination is a research project in the UK that looks at the benefits that art activities can bring to people with dementia, but instead of using art as a therapeutic tool, delivered by an art therapist, it proposes to work on participatory and socially engaged art as a way to connect communities in a creative way. As part of the Lingo Flamingo tutor training programme in partnership between the Open University and the social enterprise Lingo Flamingo, I contributed to the development of tutorials and teaching materials examining the relevance, benefits and obstacles that creative practices and multi-sensory approaches can bring to language learning in a care setting.