The document discusses inclusion and access within crisis situations in Lebanese multilingual classrooms receiving Syrian refugee students. It finds that the student population has a diversity of profiles in terms of language abilities, cultural backgrounds, and prior education experiences. It recommends celebrating diversity, building empathy, and developing social and learning skills. A training course for teachers was designed using sociolinguistic and pluralistic approaches to help practitioners deal with diverse classrooms. Principles include focusing on students' home languages and communities' values to make classrooms more inclusive. Monitoring evaluated the impact on marginalization, language exposure, and perceptions of diversity.

1. Inclusion and access within crisis situations: how
can Lebanese multilingual (and multicultural)
classrooms be inclusive and accessible?
Anne Wiseman: Manager ‘Accessing Education’ Project for Syrian
Refugees

2. Questions
Policy Makers
How can we meet the challenges of providing quality education in a
emergency situation?
• Integrate 60,000 Syrian refugees into Lebanese state schools
within a short time.
Practitioners
How can sociolinguistic and pluralistic approaches help practitioners
deal with diverse sociolinguistic profiles in their classrooms?
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3. Findings: Student Profiles
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4. • Profile 1: Students enrolled in Arabic language schools (some with
limited French or English instruction).
• Profile 2: Bedouin nomads who do not see the benefits of regular
education in relation to their livelihood.
• Profile 3: Bedouin sedentary students enrolled in schools.
• Profile 4: Students in privileged areas enrolled in urban and rural
schools with access to regular education.
• Profile 5: Students in underprivileged and rural areas enrolled in
seasonal schools. (Students are obliged to assist their parents in
agricultural labour. Syrian schools adapted their schedule
according to these key times throughout the year).
• Profile 6: Students not in school for the past 1-3 years.
• Profile 7: Kurdish students from different regions. Some enrolled in
Kurdish language schools.
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5. Theoretical underpinnings
Sociolinguistic approach (framework - Louise Dabène: 1998)
• Changing attitudes: perceptions and language security
Training course design
• Language Awareness (Hawkins: 1994)
• Plurilinguistic approaches activities (CARAP Framework: 2007)
• Pedagogy of the Other
• Autonomous Learning
• Life Skills
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6. Some of the issues /barriers
• Linguistic diversity
• Cultural diversity
• Status of children within the classroom
• Teachers’ awareness of issues multilingual
classrooms
• Teachers’ awareness of issues in multicultural
classrooms
• Teachers’ competencies
• Parents’ involvement: language abilities ,
attitudes to education
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7. Principles : Supporting the needs of displaced
learners
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Celebrate diversity and find similarities
• Building empathy
• Telling our story - hearing others
• Social skills development
• Learning to learn skills - listening
• Overcoming teacher stress
• Working with parents, carers, communities
• Working with creative arts - fun and play

8. Principles of classroom material design
• Focus on the students’ home languages /
languages of instructions;
• Link to the students’ communities’ values;
• Inclusiveness;
• Celebrate diversity in the classroom
• Share diversity in the classroom
• Listen to others’ stories
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9. Language awareness: Plurilinguistic portraits
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10. Sociograms
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Haiti
New York

11. Monitoring and evaluation
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Key concepts:
• Continuous/cyclical
• Qualitative
• Analytic
• Wide spread of data to ensure triangulation
• Long term focused studies to capture
individual changes
Data collection
• Questionnaires (before and after)
• Focus group and individual Interviews (recorded and transcribed)
• Before and after video footage used for observation analysis (
focussed)
• Qualitative data analysis (Masters students)
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Monitoring and evaluation cycle
Needs
Analysis
Findings
Design
TrainingFeedback
Review /
Revise
Training
Deliver
Training
Students
Teachers
Teacher Trainers
Advisers
Policy Makers

13. Results
Marginalisation
“Well it was really interesting. They (the Syrians) don’t feel anymore bits and pieces
in our classes so the activities here helped them to have place in this big world.”
(Adviser)
Language Exposure
“I was introduced …to many concepts mainly the sociolinguistics - it’s something
new and also we have the language awareness… it is a key to teach student
s…who are exposed to media, to internet. Changing the problem into a solution it is
just like a key to teach them.” (Trainer)
Diversity
“Till now when we talk about languages teachers dealing with languages as material
the student should learn… They talk about culture but they never think about
diversity or they never think about accepting the other.” (Trainer)
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14. References
Billiez, J. et Millet, A. (2001). Représentations sociales : trajets
théoriques et méthodologiques. In Moore, D. (ed), Les
représentations des langues et de leur apprentissage, références,
modèles, données et méthodes, Paris: Didier.
Council of Europe (2007). Framework of Reference for Pluralistic
Approaches to Languages and Cultures. European Centre for
Modern Languages
Further reading on research undertaken with Lebanese teachers
Grappe, I.(2002). Apprentissage/multilinguisme et identité
(unpublished MA thesis), Université Stendhal, Grenoble 3, France.
Grappe, I. (2010) Conception et évaluation d’une Formation de
formateurs au français sur objectifs spécifiques à partir d’une
approche sociolinguistique , unpublished thesis , Université de
Grenoble.
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15. Anne.wiseman@britishcouncil.org
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