The book explores the way our traditionally monolingual school systems are being challenged by students from diverse language backgrounds, forcing educationalists to question entrenched ideologies of language and challenging teachers in their everyday classrooms to rethink their relationships to language learning and the issue of diversity.
Christine Hélot is emeritus professor of English at the University of Strasbourg, France. As a sociolinguist, her research focuses on language in education policies in France and in Europe, bi-multilingual education, intercultural education, language awareness, early childhood education, and children’s literature and multiliteracy. In 1988 she obtained her PhD from Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland) for a thesis on bilingualism in the family and in 2005 she was awarded an Habilitation (University of Strasbourg) for her research on bi/plurilingualism at school. Dr Hélot was a lecturer at the University of Ireland before returning to France and since then has been a guest professor in Spain, Germany, Japan, and the USA. She has published widely in French and English, and co-edited several volumes on bilingual and multilingual education. Her research on critical language awareness was the subject of a documentary film entitled "Raconte-moi ta langue/Tell me how you talk": https://vimeo.com/402284515
Muiris Ó Laoire is Professor in the School of Health and Social Sciences at Munster Technological University, Ireland. He is author of several articles, chapters and books on language revitalisation, language teaching, language policy and multilingualism. He is currently providing professional development in content and language integrated learning (CLIL) to the Department (Ministry) of Education and to the European Schools Inspectorate. He was on the organising committee of the first international conference on immersion education in Ireland in 2015 and co-edited the conference proceedings with T.J. Ó Ceallaigh in 2015 and 2021.