Page 87 - Linguistically Diverse Educational Contexts

learning by, for example, creating channels on MS Teams (DSW) and Zoom (University of Malaga), where students could connect in small groups and where a teacher could connect to provide support and conversation. Certainly, during the research we were also able to observe how our home and public worlds overlap163, triggering a variety of situations, from the voices of family members in the background to students becoming stressed when losing their internet connection during group work.
The analysis presented here shows that students from both universities enjoyed working together, organising their learning, and using their language repertoire to communicate and build new meanings. The students were surprised that they could decide for themselves what they were learning, what language (including second/foreign language) they were using while working in class, and that they could experiment not only with the content, but also with the ways of learning and work they prepared. Such directed work counterintuitively does not create chaos in the classroom; it allows for observation of learners' work and encourages the teacher to take new actions to support learners in their personal journey of what learning should be (Hattie, 2012, p. 16). During the first sessions, students from both research groups worked in small groups. In the research group from the University of Lower Silesia, differences in the work of foreign and Polish students were evident. It seems that the students from the Polish university expected more precise instructions to follow, especially at the beginning of the course. They also expected frequent confirmation from the teacher as to whether they were doing the task well. It is certainly possible to conclude that all learners, regardless of the country they come from, respond to learning materials in different ways, as it depends on their cultural interpretations and previous experiences. In this case, however, I think it is possible to also conclude that the influence of traditional education on learners from the early stages of education in Poland on independent thinking and actions taken during the change of education is clear. Students from Spain and Germany showed greater ease in adapting to the class formula and independence in decision- making.
In the two groups there were difficulties not so much in communicating in the foreign language, but in conveying meaning and planning work, which seemed frustrating to the students. This may be due to the fact that in the traditional approach to education we learn the language but rarely treat it as a tool for work. In the Spanish research group, communication was more efficient; it seems that this is because the language skills of philology students are generally higher than those of pre-service teachers. In both research groups, there were some dilemmas related to building an independent learning path during the class and making decisions, so that some activities during the class took longer than expected. It seems that this form of work requires an introduction, training, and the building of greater awareness over a longer period of time, as well as reflexivity and autonomy among the learners, as they are often afraid to go beyond what the teacher has said and adopt a conformist, compliant attitude. This may also be conditioned by entrenched power relations in the teacher-student relationship in which learners are accustomed to passivity, obedience, and often silence. The reflection that came to me after conducting these activities in the context of the language course I created was whether such a form of education can contribute to transcending the perceived and understood limitations of learners. Can (plurilingual) language education be understood as a combination of critical pedagogy and educational linguistics, and contribute to the emancipation of the personal (IAM) and
163 On the "grammar of education" in the conditions of ieducation she wrote: Czerepaniak-Walczak, 2020, pp. 13–23.
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